


Roman Holidays

by blueincandescence



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Christmas enthusiasm, F/M, Food, M/M, Mission Fic, Multi, OT3, Piazza Spagna, Research, Snowbound, and miraculous snowfall, antiques, fashion - Freeform, gallya, h/c, sparkling water and hearty wine, the Eternal City, tiny hotel lifts, unexpected gifts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 18:19:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13129314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: With Napoleon working to put his past to rest, Waverly sends Illya and Gaby to support his mission in Rome. Tensions run high between the three agents as they negotiate the recent hash they've made of their, ah, complex relationship. Luckily, Agent Gaby Teller is on the case — and she's bound and determined to earn a merry Christmas for them all.





	1. Gaby's Choice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rebelliousrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelliousrose/gifts).



> I have to say, I _loved_ this prompt and the opportunity to explore our dear trio! I hope this fic scratches that spy Christmas itch, rebelliousrose!
> 
> ALL THE THANK YOUs to my fabulous, wonderful, kind, intelligent, and perfect beta for this beast of a fic, whose identity shall remain hidden until the big reveal!
> 
> Post-Holidays ETA: It was MilkshakeKate! The perfect delight! All the thanks yous to her! The (no doubt) many typos at the end are totally on me because I finished on, like, the 23rd. Deadlines schmeadlines heh. 
> 
> Here's a quick little aesthetic: http://blueincandescence.tumblr.com/post/169358649165/roman-holidays-a-quick-little-edit-my-fic-for-the

The mod white stylings of UNCLE’s state-of-the-art headquarters is an ideal canvas for the American Christmas pastiche. Gaby is delighted to discover this as she steps out of the elevators. Silvery tinsel and multicolored lights glisten and wink from vaulted ceilings. Velvety reds and wintry greens have replaced orange and yellow pops of color. Someone — no doubt the guffawing lot down in R&D — has come up with an ingenious frost effect for the office’s many windows and glass walls. 

At the top of the stairs, Gaby takes in the cheer while an office boy helps her with her coat and gloves. She has arrived in time for lunch, so the steno pool is abuzz with lightning fast last-minute typing and good-natured arguments over the restaurants that have become old hat in less than a year. Alongside the steno pool, agents pop out of their shared offices to interrogate each other on who’s buying. 

The open floor plan has been a point of pride for Gaby from the moment Waverly unrolled the blueprints across his cramped desk in London. The boys had all but gasped, confirming her suspicion that both Langley and Lubyanka must be labyrinthine monstrosities with doors twelve-inches thick and ordinances forbidding natural light. In a way, she understood Illya’s objection to the absurdity of an international spy agency attempting transparency. And perhaps Napoleon was right, too, that the architecture was meant as a reminder of glasshouses and the danger of throwing stones. But her belief in their mod New York City headquarters as a symbol for the borderless forward-thinking UNCLE stands for is just as valid, and she’d told them so rather convincingly. Or at least loudly.

Their differing interpretations of HQ is a reasonable explanation for Gaby’s frequent presence in the office and the boys’ prolonged absences. One of many reasonable explanations, in fact, that Waverly has posited in the past months. Gaby doesn’t know what the boys have told him. For her part, she has clung to her tattered pride and agreed to them all.

Gaby lifts her eyes to Waverly’s glassed-in office as she makes her way down into the steno pool. Waverly is seated in his usual spot behind his desk, but today he is half-obscured by a fancifully drawn winter wonderland. Gaby pauses in the middle of the pool to congratulate the secretaries on an office well decorated, light a few cigarettes, compliment some lip shades, and generally ensure that her coffee continues to come from the freshest pot and her correspondences move swiftest to the top of the docket.  

Her attention is caught when Waverly shoots to his feet and begins to pace. He is wagging his sternest finger at the telephone. Fortunately, the person on the receiving end is unable to see Waverly’s gray head bob over snowy hills. Snorts and giggles burst forth from the secretaries when Waverley steps into the silhouette of a snowman, his profile lining up too perfectly with a stovepipe and a top hat not to be by design. Gaby is teetering on the edge of losing it herself when she reads ‘Solo’ on Waverly’s lips and immediately forfeits all humor. She takes a deep breath before telling the girls to run along to lunch. 

Waverly’s executive secretary, Mrs. Rosenblum, is holding the door open for Gaby before she reaches the top of the stairs. Waverly has somehow gotten lured into arguing with Napoleon in incomprehensibly fast Italian, a trap Gaby has seen go poorly for even native speakers. She makes herself useful pouring two glasses of eggnog. Her ears perk at the name Auriemma and, just like that, the Italian and the yelling both have context. That revelation combined with the sudden slam of the telephone makes her jump.

“The nerve,” Waverly bites off, throwing himself into his chair. Without commenting on Gaby’s presence, he accepts the eggnog and launches in. “I offer my assistance — sorely needed, I might add — and he ever so politely declines! As if I’m his — his doting uncle trying to offload an embarrassing family heirloom.”

Gaby slips into one of the chairs lined up across from Waverly’s desk. Like always, she is uncomfortably aware of her back to the glass. No doubt the few times Illya took a seat here he’d broken out into hives.

“I won’t stand for these shoddy operations any longer. Solo needs backup.” Waverly punctuates his pronouncement by thudding down his drink, splattering his tie with tiny milky white droplets.

As placidly as she can, Gaby says, “I take it O'Donoghue didn’t work out.”

“Ho,” Waverly cries. “It was a bigger disaster than Agent Zhang.” He notices the state of his tie, the horror of it seeming to bring him back into the moment. 

While Waverly composes himself, Gaby sips her eggnog and tries to read the names of the files scattered on his desk without moving her eyes too much. ‘Solo, Napoleon.’ ‘Antiquities, Imperial.’ And a file addressed from INTERPOL labeled ‘Rome, 1953.’ A stab of worry needles the heart she’d meant to harden against that careless man.

His presentable self once more, Waverly leans forward to address Gaby. “Agent Teller, it seems to me that the situation requires your — ”

“A woman’s touch,” Gaby breaks in. “Sound idea. Perhaps Agent Sanchez?”

Waverly falls back, evidently resigning himself to a hard sell. “Agent Sanchez is a devout Catholic. I cannot in good conscience partner Solo with any agent who objects to contraceptives. I simply cannot.”

Gaby is in no position to refute that logic. “HR would have your head.” 

“Quite right. Agent Teller, please. It has been four months, seven days, and eleven hours since the last time my three best agents were in one place together. Please — ” 

Alarm shoots through Gaby. This is the most direct Waverly has been on the subject, and she hasn’t had time to prepare a proper defense against the truth.

Hands outstretched and placating, Waverly says, “I haven’t asked. I have respected your evasions. I have eaten the long distance bill on calls to Moscow — ” He picks up his glass again if only to have something to gesticulate with. “I offer a mission with Solo, hard ‘nyet.’ I offer a mission with you, tortured silence followed by the most forlorn ‘nyet’ ever uttered.”

Gaby has long since given up the tell of twisting her fingers in her lap, but that doesn’t stop her heart from twisting all the same.

“It’s one syllable, for heaven’s sake. Where did the Red Peril even begin to learn to emote like that?” The accusation in the glare Waverly levels at her over his horned-rimmed glasses is enough to make Gaby’s mouth pop open. But he intones, “I haven’t asked.” Waverly sets down his drink again to clasp his hands together. “This mission Solo is on isn’t the apocalyptic lark we’ve all grown accustomed to. It’s — ” Waverly’s sigh is heavy. “It’s personal.”

“Personal? Solo?” Bitterness fairly sprays out of her before she can stop it. The laugh she tries to shield herself with is brittle.

Waverly drops eye contact. “Gaby, I haven’t asked. But I can damn well guess.”

A flush spreads from her chest to her cheeks. She says nothing.

Waverly remains in a monologuing mood. “It’s my fault in the end, really. In Rome, I’m the one who asked you to be the tie that binds those two brilliant idiots together.”

“Begged me,” Gaby amends, bitterer still. She’d made him do it to cover up her own eagerness. All her plans for freedom out the window because of an unnamable sense of guilt and three unfinished kisses.

“Yes, and you performed exactly as I knew you would. You got into their heads and you made them better agents. UNCLE agents. You defined what that means.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Gaby says into her eggnog. Napoleon’s line. Dead giveaway.

Waverly’s leather chair creaks as he softens his posture to lean forward. “Who could fault either of them for succumbing to your charms, ay?” This part more hesitant: “And you theirs?”

Gaby bottoms up her drink. He missed a spoke on that wheel, but she can’t blame him. She almost convinced herself to miss it, too. 

“Oh, I made it sound so enticing, this spymaster’s life,” Waverly laments. “And I kept the three of you practically on top of each other — ”

Gaby has come too far as a professional to choke on her drink, but it’s a near thing.

“That was my second mistake.” Waverly tips back, palms massaging his forehead. While he talks, Gaby comes around to his side of the desk. “In the Service, in the CIA, and even in the KGB, agents are expected to cultivate lives beyond the job.” He doesn’t seem to register Gaby rummaging through his drawers. “Marriage, children. Competitive gardening. Anything that will help them bare in mind that none of this is real.” 

Gaby pulls back the aspirin she was just about to hand him.

“Don’t fret, Gaby, I never take my own advice.” Waverly pats her knee. “You’re in my will.”

She gives him the aspirin and a fond smile. “I hope you live forever.”

Waverly downs the pills with his eggnog and pulls an agonized face. “Good God! Not with these Yanks trying to poison me,” he says, the sound garbled from his attempt to keep his taste buds away from the drink coating his mouth. Gaby fishes out his handkerchief and lets him use it to wipe his tongue while she fetches a paper cup from the water cooler. He drinks it down in one gulp. Crisis contained, Waverly gets up to fill his cup again. “That drink should have stayed in the Dark Ages with the Black Death.”

Taking his chair, Gaby lets Waverly be the one to sit pretty on the corner of his desk. In all seriousness, she says, “I heard the name Auriemma. We’ve all read each other’s locked files,” she explains, though Waverly doesn’t look surprised.

“It’s an auction. Exorbitant amounts of money are about to exchange hands and THRUSH is going to be there to shove it down their pockets somehow, I know it. But Solo...Well, he does have to live up to that name of his, doesn’t he?” 

Resting a hand on Waverly’s knee, she looks up at her boss and mentor with mute sympathy.

“Napoleon needs us,” is Waverly’s final pitch. “He needs you to keep him smart. He needs Illya to keep him going. And he needs me to get the pair of you to Rome as soon as possible.”

Gaby sinks back into warm leather. Christmas in Rome. It’s been two and a half years since they’ve been back there. She can’t imagine how beautiful it must be in winter. She wonders if it ever snows in such a temperate climate. Every time she wakes up to a blanket of fresh, white powder she feels a surge of hope that should have been snuffed out in her a long time ago. But Gaby is nothing if not a sucker for the promise of new beginnings. 

Waverly places a hand on her shoulder. He knows when she wants to say yes in spite of herself.

Instead, she murmurs, “I’m afraid we might be more harm than good to each other these days.”

Waverly, for all his no-nonsense pragmatism, has a kindness in his face that can’t be faked. He employs it well. “After everything you three have been through together? I don’t think that’s possible.”

A lot of things Gaby never thought possible have happened between them. She has made those things happen, and she has weathered the consequences. Her fingers itch for something more to drink. She supposes a transatlantic flight is as good a place to get drunk as any. Gaby tells Waverly, “All right.”

The hush in her voice seems to cut through some of his certainty. “Let’s make your arrival a jolly surprise for Agent Solo, shall we?” Off her grim nod Waverly hazards, “Agent Kuryakin remains a challenge.”

That was underselling it by a Russian mile. “Tell him — ” She purses her lips. The only way to gain ground is to give it, but knowing a thing and stomaching it are very different. Still, as always, it doesn’t take long for her to soften for that infuriating man. “Tell Illya I said please.”

As if concerned she’ll change her mind, Waverly leaves immediately to tell his secretary to make the arrangements.

Gaby sits still, struck by memory. Why did she phrase it like that? ‘Please.’ Searching blue eyes boring deeper into hers with every twitch. One of her hands tangled in golden hair, the other reaching back to grasp a silk lapel. Neither man had dared feign shock. Yet it had fallen on her to do the pleading for them.

And here she is again. 

No more, Gaby decides, picking up a file and flicking through it until she regains enough composure to absorb the information. In Rome, the boys can shoulder the burden of emotional arbitration for once. She will do as she pleases.


	2. Napoleon's Past

Napoleon entertains a semi-circle of upmarket potential bidders with a jaunty tale from Jack Deveney’s fanciful past. Out of the corner of his eye, he tracks Auriemma’s movements across the ballroom. The decor for tonight’s event is Christmas at Versaille, and their hostess is a vision in a shapely dress made from mirrored metals that glint like snakeskin.

He had been a boy of twenty when his obsession with Signora Auriemma Rossi was forged and a scant four years older when her betrayal shattered it. Napoleon is thirty-seven now, a secret agent on track to repay Auriemma the favor with interest by the New Year. And yet enough shards of his obsession remain to puncture him in the gut whenever she beckons him with that toothsome smile.

Napoleon leaves the potential bidders on a light bow to flatter their respective family claims. Dispossessed royalty are all the rage in Europe these days.

Auriemma has more for him to charm. Taking possession of his elbow, she invites Napoleon to fawn with her. “What an honor,” he tells a Hapsburg, five times removed, and his faintly Bourbon wife, “to reunite you with the priceless artifacts of your heritage.”

“Oh, my darling Jack. In our line of work you must never say the word ‘priceless.’” Auriemma shudders, her sly wink inviting laughter. That is her power — the ability to cheat a crowd and have them adore her for it. The sound of their good spirits trail away as Auriemma leads him to a discreet balcony. “Napoleon,” she chides, pretending to square his already immaculate bowtie, “you are far too beautiful to be so obsequious. They are rich, not imbeciles.”

“Apologies,” he says, tone clipped. He’d manufactured a lovers’ quarrel two days ago to give himself some cover for staying at the safehouse. Auriemma has swallowed the drama whole, and Napoleon will keep on feeding her while he waits for Waverly’s next neophyte to show up with the intel for phase three. Napoleon has been not much more than Auriemma’s kept man thus far, but he plans to leverage his way back into her confidences.

Auriemma weights a hand on his chest. “Tesoro mio,” she coos. “ _You are angry with me_.” Her dark eyes spark at the once foreign notion. How disgustingly smitten Napoleon had been all those years ago. He disentangles himself, and her luminous face crinkles appealingly. Fifty suits Auriemma. Her smile lines and fuller figure project a warmth no cold-blooded creature could produce from within.

“ _I have that right_ ,” Napoleon reminds Auriemma in her own southern Italian dialect.

Sighing, she leans half on him and half on the railing. “When I think of you languishing all these years in a prison cell…” She hasn’t gotten better at feigning compassion, Napoleon notes and, just as idly, considers the fleeting pleasure one good push would provide.

The sheer volume of paperwork is enough to check the impulse. “Crocodile tears are beneath you, Aurie.”

She turns, party lights glinting on the long-toothed silver comb twisting up in her long, dark hair. Though Napoleon has seen Auriemma dip the sharp teeth of that comb in an infusion of deadly nightshade, her words are the stronger poison. “Betraying you brought me nothing but bitter sorrow. I don’t know how you survived all these years locked away. I would die if anyone took my freedom from me, you must believe that. You saved my life.” Her dark eyes shimmer with tears as clear and chilling as Arctic waters.

Napoleon shoves down disgust and resentment to infuse his smoothest tones with enough anguish to suggest a broken heart longing for repair. “If you gave me a second thought before I crashed your party last month, I’ll eat my finest hat.”

“I did think of you, passerotto,” Auriemma proclaims to house left. “I’ll never forgive myself. How could I?” She turns into him, cupping his jaw between her gloved hands. “When I missed seeing your exquisite face blossom into this magnificence?” Her stroking fingers are mournful.

The night air turns frigid. The version of himself he is conjuring for Auriemma is a wasted life reduced to aesthetics, lazy acting all around. Napoleon shivers, and Auriemma kisses his pursed lips in response. He has fucked her two dozen times since he took this mission. He can’t stomach it tonight.

A husky voice rings out, as clear and welcome as a dinner bell: “Mr. Deveney! There you are.” Gabriella Teller, a guardian angel in flowing white couture.

She steps out onto the balcony, giving Napoleon the opportunity to slip out of Auriemma’s clutches. They kiss the air above each other’s cheeks, and he inhales the crisp scent of her perfume. Her brand is heavier than he might have selected for such a slight woman, but Gaby has defied his expectations from the start — a ballerina’s poise lending authority to a mechanic's jumpsuit.

Napoleon gives her nipped-in waist a quick squeeze. His grip is steady as ever, but he hopes it conveys a sliver of his gratitude. Coming to his rescue can’t have been an easy choice for her, not the way they’d left things. Gaby’s inscrutable brown eyes flick behind him.

He hadn’t felt Auriemma move, but her hand is on his back. To Gaby, she says, “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.”

“No, of course,” Napoleon says. “May I present our hostess, Signora Auriemma Rossi. Aurie, this is Miss…” He pretends to mask embarrassment with a winning smile. “Ah, you’re going to think me an awful cad — ”

Gaby reaches across him to squeeze Auriemma’s gloved fingers, introducing herself as Veerle de Riquet de Caraman. Napoleon mentally congratulates her on the impeccable Anglo-Dutch accent and impressive pedigree she’s given her cover. Niceties concluded, Gaby admonishes, “Really, Mr. Deveney. Has it been so long since you were a guest at my cousin’s estate?”

“I do apologize. How ever can I make it up to you?”

Few slant an eyebrow as razor-sharp as Gaby’s. “My forgiveness does not come cheaply. You promised me imperial diamonds bigger than my knuckles.” She holds a hand up for him to graze a dutiful kiss over the softness of her skin.

“How marvelous,” Auriemma simpers, grip tightening on his jacket. “A rival.”

Gaby pulls her hand back and joins it with her other around the stem of her champagne glass. “I beg your pardon?” She plays her parts so well. Identity on top of identity, motive intersecting motive. Not a hint of superficiality underpins her lies, to say nothing of her truths.

“Let us not be coy. I adore competition.” Auriemma laughs. “Keeps one young.”

Haughtiness personified, Gaby says, “I assure you, my interests are purely mercenary. I’m here to get the best price.”

“Better and better.” Auriemma advances on Gaby, handing off her half-empty champagne glass to Napoleon. “Come, passerotta, we will have a drink.” The pair of them leave Napoleon on the balcony. They are nothing alike, save their coloring, but Auriemma chooses her rivals the same way she chooses her lovers. ‘Passerotto,’ sparrow, means one who is learning to fly. It is a message directed at him. There are always more protégés in the sea.

Napoleon presses his mouth to Gaby’s mauve lipstick stain and gulps her champagne. The dregs he throws out over the balcony. At a party in Galicia, he’d done the same and gotten back such choice Slavic curses that he’d repeated the move twice. What Napoleon wouldn’t give for a prank like that now.

Or ever again. While making no direct inquiries on the matter, he has gleaned that Illya has not stepped foot outside of the Soviet Union since turning in his mission report from Cuba. That Illya is the only one of them whose life was directly endangered by what transpired on those sultry Havana nights is not lost on Napoleon.

He grips the balcony rail. His thoughts have all been doom and gloom since coming to Italy, a fact that only serves as a further depressant. Napoleon has prided himself on being the type to never waste a villa even in the direst of circumstances. And these emphatically were not. The world won’t end if Auriemma Rossi gets richer off pilfered royalist nostalgia. His world won’t even end. Whether that she-devil gets hers or not, Napoleon has two and a half years of CIA impressment and a lifetime of surveillance to look forward to. So what is this yawning chasm in the pit of his stomach?

He’s no Freudian, but peering into an empty champagne flute alone in the cold with his back to a party can’t be helping.

Entering a room and scanning for Gaby has become second nature, though to see her stripped of her towering shadow is the opposite. In his mind, they have been Illya-and-Gaby from the moment Napoleon surrendered the right to check a tracking device. Conflation as self-preservation, little good it did him in Havana.

Gaby had worn white in Havana, too. A summer dress and a summer disposition. Lean, tan legs intertwined with long, pale ones. Illya built a sandcastle for her, looking as boyish and light as Napoleon had yet witnessed. Illya would look even younger with his lips parted open, wet from Napoleon’s mouth.

The yawning chasm widens a fraction, and his palm goes to where the buttons of his tuxedo jacket skim his stomach. Perhaps he should visit a tailor. He has never felt so ill-at-ease in a bespoke suit.

From the crowd, Gaby appears with her hand outstretched for him to usher her into a waltz. The effortless grace of her body glides with his.

Through a flirtatious smile, Gaby says, “Your contact at the Louvre confirms you were right about the Russian pieces. Authentic Romanov. The Kremlin is eager to have it all returned to the Motherland. What sentiment.”

“What spite. Maria Vladimirovna has styled herself Grand Duchess of Russia. Our comrades can’t have her looking the part.” Napoleon angles himself and Gaby out of the trajectory of Auriemma, who is dancing spryly with a widowed duke.

Gaby’s sharp eyes don’t leave Auriemma. “I can see why you became involved with her.” Sympathy with a barb at the center. It’s so like Gaby Napoleon experiences his first genuine smile of the evening. She adds, “In fact, I think we’re becoming fast friends.”

He gives Gaby the shudder she was angling for.

There is something bright and brittle in her answering grin. “Women you’ve been involved with sharing confidences — a recurring nightmare of yours?”

So struck is Napoleon by Gaby’s acknowledgment of their rather complex entanglement that it’s several beats before he has a reply for her. “Any minute now I’ll think I’ve woken up only to find myself taking my field test in the nude.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Cheeky.” There’s more surprise than innuendo in his tone, but Napoleon can’t stop his fingers from twitching lower on her bare back.

Gaby, the unfathomable minx, presses against his hand. “So you said.” Six weeks ago in Buenos Aires, she was hurling shot glasses at his head. Now she’s reminding him how, in the summer heat, he had cupped her perfect ass in his palms and compared it to the Venus de Milo.

Containing his awe and his suspicion, Napoleon takes the orchestra’s flourishing cue to spin Gaby into a tighter hold. “How did I ever convince myself you seemed so innocent?”

She embodies effervescence as she transitions seamlessly into a triple-step waltz. “You were trying your damnedest not to take advantage, wasn’t it? That’s what you claimed.”

“Yes, I can be quite chivalrous,” Napoleon agrees with her teasing and leads by her graceful example. “Not to mention observant. I saw you slip a potato peeler out of the drawer on your way to my guest room.”

“You can be wise, too.” Gaby tries to trip him up by initiating a cross-step, but Napoleon is nothing if not observant when it comes to those slender hips of hers.

He pivots them into a chassé. “On the contrary, juffrouw. I was more intrigued by your ingenuity than ever.” That night in his kitchen, the prickly little Ossi he’d just rescued insulted his favorite apartment and his five-star cooking. She’d guzzled wine like the French avant-garde and missed a swipe of grease on her aristocratic neck. He’d popped an onion in his mouth and relished the challenge of stripping back her layers. All Napoleon relates of this is, “It was Sanders who saved your virtue, that walking, grunting buzzkill.”

“Arroganter Mann,” Gaby mutters before throwing her head back in a trilling laugh for Auriemma’s benefit. She fans herself, indicating he should take her arm and escort her off the dancefloor.

Napoleon feels rather than sees the snake-like glare on the back of his neck. To shake it off, he finds them a corner of the room so crowded they might as well be in private.

Gaby’s hold on his elbow softens almost imperceptibly. “Why confront her after all this time?”

“The opportunity presented itself.” Not the first time it has, merely the first time he’s pursued it.

As to why, his ears are still ringing with Gaby’s accusations. She’d called him a tin man — never mind that he’d taken her to see _The Wizard of Oz_ himself as part of a bid to make up for every pleasure she’d missed abandoned on the wrong side of a Wall.

Her exact words — the ones he could make out — had been: ‘Illya and I are not your playthings, Tin Man! I am not here to fill your bed! I am your partner!’ He’d waved his white handkerchief and she, exhausted, let him poke his head out from behind the sofa. Gaby had asked: ‘What happened to you? That you can’t stop pretending there’s not more to you than this?’ Her disdain was for his bemused but unperturbed demeanor, which seemed at the time grafted onto his skin.

So Napoleon went to Italy. Penance, his Irish-Catholic father might have called it. Napoleon thinks of it as more akin to shock therapy.

In the silence that has fallen between them, Gaby has procured another glass of champagne for herself. She drinks it in measured sips and tracks the party. It is as if he no longer exists for her. When Illya was the intended target, Napoleon had thought this move flimsy and absurd. Now he rubs his stomach. “How does one tell if one is developing an ulcer?”

Gaby swivels her head toward him, her expression letting him know it’s her victory, not his. She rests a hand on his. Her touch is nearly as gentle as it was with Illya. Nearly as gentle as she’d been with Napoleon the first time she invited him into her plush heat. She murmurs, “You would think someone who loves himself as much as you do would take better care.”

Her ability to scratch her talons down his most ticklish spots pulls from him a second genuine smile. “I’ve never known you to care for a man who wasn’t more than he seems.”

Gaby blinks up at him. Perhaps because he’s broken down and evoked Illya first. Perhaps because Napoleon is admitting he’d listened to her that day in Buenos Aires. Either way, it’s a fine moment for a kiss. Suitable for their covers. And, based on the dewy look in Gaby’s eyes, unlikely to end with a champagne flute cracked against his skull.

Only accepting a gift he didn’t deserve is what got them into this mess. So Napoleon presses his lips to her cheek and refrains from whispering in Gaby’s ear how stunning she looks.  

A crack of glass meeting marble rings out from somewhere in the crush. Waitstaff part a path that opens Napoleon and Gaby’s lines of sight to the tallest man in the room.

Illya stands in the center of a small Russian delegation. His most ferocious scowl is directed toward the shatter spray at his feet. He stands with one arm across his chest, that tell-tale hand of his tucked away from view.

Napoleon, back to the room, turns a look on Gaby that is as furious as it is aghast as it is relieved the damage he has done to them cannot be as irrevocable as he feared.

His partners have come for him.


	3. Illya's Temper

**** Head pounding, Illya wakes on the unfamiliar end of being passed out beneath a record player. The soft Italian leather of the shoe that steps beside his nose is a dead giveaway, making Illya all the quicker to unholster his pistol. 

Knocking his knee against the silencer, Napoleon greets, “Good morning.” His attention is on the record in the player. “This isn’t one of mine.” He nudges the bottle rolling around at his feet. “That, on the other hand, was. Za zdorovye.”

A noise halfway between a snarl and a groan issuing from his throat, Illya lets his pistol hand fall to his chest. Napoleon smiles down on him, shaking his head slightly. Even at this angle, Napoleon looks like he just stepped off a Hollywood set. Rock Hudson had been Illya’s first thought when Napoleon’s photograph flashed up on that screen. Same haircut, an equally ridiculous name. The kind of man who could wear a suit as well as he could shoot a gun. A silver-screen cowboy in the flesh. The vodka-soaked weight of Illya’s eyelids clamp together. “Ukhodi,” he grits out, and winces at the defeat in his own voice.

To his surprise, Napoleon complies. Though he only goes as far as the armchair Illya meant to fall asleep on. “You knew I was going to turn up eventually,” Napoleon observes, some strange note in his voice.

Napoleon returning to the safehouse was an inevitability Illya had prepared for with Gaby’s favorite liquid pain relief. Waking up with his knuckles bruised and the situation settled would have made poisoning himself worth it. He stifles another groan.

“You know, marijuana hangovers are much milder,” Napoleon reasons. “And since you’ve become such a fan of the American counterculture — ”

“Bob Dylan is communist,” Illya snaps, ending the conversation there. The case lined with contraband records he amassed to fill months of harsh silence is mercifully hidden from Napoleon's scrutiny. Illya himself is not. He can almost see the sharp-eyed stare through the backs of his eyelids.

Ceramic scrapes wood as Napoleon rights a lamp. “Doesn’t your government have a safehouse in Rome for you to scourge? I had to sleep abroad last night.”

Illya’s snort rasps against the dryness of his throat. “You prefer it.” His fingers twitch toward the neck of the bottle, ready to retaliate if Napoleon directs any vulgarities at Gaby meant to rile him. It is bad enough that Illya couldn’t stop himself from shadowing her to her hotel after the party, knowing how furious she’d be if she’d caught him. He doesn’t need Napoleon needling it out of him, throwing Illya’s jealousy in Gaby’s face to score points at his expense.

What Napoleon says is, “I did find a lovely boutique. Single bed.” The strange note reveals itself — courtesy. The American agent is handling him, and not by way of his usual placating condescension. He’s all the more dangerous for how sincere he sounds. “I sent a taxi round to Gaby’s. She’ll be joining us presently.”

Shooting up, Illya casts his eyes about the room expecting to find the mess he’d made to put himself to sleep. The room is as he found it when he broke in late last night.

“Already tidied,” Napoleon says, visibly tamping down his own regard for his preternatural quiet.

Illya squints mistrust at Napoleon as he gets to his feet. He finds a glass of whiskey on the edge of the table. It’s clearly meant as an opohmelka, what Waverly calls hair of the dog. Illya wants to refuse it. Napoleon was not supposed to be the one to lord his assistance around, Illya was. He had cherished the feeling of superiority all the way from Moscow. Still, he drinks.

Elbows on his knees, Napoleon leans forward. “That’s the ticket. Now, Illya, I understand for a stalwart Soviet like yourself this all must be — ”

Before he can twist him up with whatever slick speech he has prepared, Illya raises one stern finger. Napoleon lets him finish his remedy in peace. Illya savors the taste and his newfound ability to command respect. Or at least the semblance of it. When he’s finished, Illya says, “I ask questions. You give answers.”

Napoleon spreads his arms wide open, but his gaze goes to the pistol Illya returns to his holster. “Shoot.”

Squaring his shoulders and placing his hands behind his back, Illya towers over Napoleon. Every ounce of his training goes into the neutral expression he adopts. In the version he rehearsed, his head doesn’t feel like it’s split open. He’ll manage. “While I was gone, you were with Gaby.”

“At HQ, from time to time. We lunched.” Napoleon shifts in his seat, crossing one leg. “And we were assigned a mission together.”

Illya’s brutal tone leaves no room for wordplay: “You were intimate.”

The hard line of Napoleon's jaw lifts toward Illya. His hands brace on the armrests. “Yes.”

A wash of anger he’s been living with for months threatens to launch Illya forward, as expected. What shocks him is the second wave of feeling that locks him into place — ice-cold relief. He was right not to dwell on anything more complex or confusing than this: he has been betrayed, and Napoleon is to blame.

Through his teeth, Illya demands, “When?”

“Six weeks ago.”

Near to when Napoleon alerted UNCLE to the imperialist auction, Illya can’t help note. He stays on topic, indicating that Napoleon should go on.

“It was in Buenos Aires. Escaped Nazis, long parties, no casualties. Your least favorite kind of mission.” Napoleon fixes him with a look. “No doubt that’s why you declined to join us.” He weathers Illya’s glare for a long moment before sighing. “It was a disaster. The — ” Napoleon trails a hand that Illya should want to snap in half — “and the mission. We prevailed, but it’s never the same paired up. You know how it is.”

Illya refuses to acknowledge that he does know. On missions with Gaby, as competent as she is, as well as they anticipate each other, it was like working with one hand. The same on missions with Napoleon. Still one hand more compared to when he returned to the KGB. With them, there was no improvisation. No one at his back.

Napoleon continues, “Gaby was furious with me. Made for grand excitement — ”

“Suka,” Illya hisses, a warning. He’s listening hard for Gaby’s steps in the hallway. The last thing he needs her to see is his quaking hand around Napoleon’s throat. Not again.

Napoleon gets up, buttoning his suit jacket over the breadth of his chest and stepping into Illya’s space. “A lot of hard words and harder objects have been thrown my way recently.”

Illya’s nostrils flare and his hackles raise. If that devil-faced debaucher expects any sympathy —

“Perhaps I deserve them,” Napoleon says, and cuts Illya’s righteous anger down to the quick: “But Gaby doesn’t deserve any of this.” Napoleon waits for a reply that Illya can’t give. Stepping around him, Napoleon walks over to the record player to pick up the empty vodka bottle. He takes it with him to the kitchen.

Only Illya’s eyes follow Napoleon. The rest of him is rooted to the spot by the force of his anger so abruptly directed inward. The subject of Gaby and what she deserves is a sore one. It catapults Illya back to Havana when the respect and care Gaby deserves lost out to the lewd acts she professed to want.

A nauseated flush spreads through Illya, and he huffs as he goes into the bathroom. He soaks the back of his head under the faucet. Napoleon’s absurd bid for sainthood niggles under Illya’s skin. The insults Illya had hurled at Napoleon were harder than hard, and he prays Gaby never hears them translated. No, more than that — Illya regrets every one of them for Napoleon’s sake. And his own. They are alike in ways he never imagined having to confront. When shame takes Illya, nothing seems as grotesque as a mirror. He glares at his reflection, red-eyed and pale. A comb helps. He attacks his mouth with a toothbrush. A bad taste lingers.

The insults had come on their last night in Havana. They had consummated this Greek tragedy brewing between them all. Illya had made it clear that he had done what Gaby had asked of him because she was his and his alone. But Napoleon had refused to let up with the obscene play-by-play, the insinuations that Illya enjoyed them both far more than he let on. And Gaby — it was all in good fun, she’d chided from Napoleon’s lap. While laughing at Napoleon’s wit. Letting Napoleon receive the benefit of the sweetness and care she once reserved for Illya.

_ Degenerate _ , he’d called Napoleon, and the whole scene steadily devolved into shouts and fists. A clash of teeth over bleeding lips — that violent edge to his want Illya had taken such care to hide from Gaby. He hated Napoleon for flinching away from that edge, for being the name Gaby yelled out in worry. Illya heard his own name as a sharp command.

Once, a word from Gaby’s lips had the power to bring Illya to heel. But that night in Havana, the riot in his brain only got louder, drowning her out. Later, he would realize this was what he’d done to her by giving in. He’d taken her power from her. He’d degraded their love for something forbidden. Desirable. His feelings for Gaby had started much the same. Loving a defector had cracked open his hollow world and filled him in with music and dancing and lovemaking and hushed talks of a future difficult for either of them to imagine. He told her she completed him, and she vowed the same. They’d made liars of each other for a thief, a philanderer. A man they owed their lives to and more.

Illya leans against the sink, his head hung low, his neck a mess of knots from sleeping on the floor on top of all the anger he’s been carrying on his back like a shield. The truth is, he wants to apologize. But he was raised, trained on the idea that so many things are unforgivable.

Before washing his hands and shaving his face, Illya takes his time unfastening his father's watch from around his wrist. He inspects the frayed edges of the leather straps where a knife sliced into the leather. He has been careful, but the damage can only worsen. Illya places his father’s watch in his pocket and turns on the faucet.

A light, rhythmic rap followed by the squeak of the front door. Illya is out into the sitting room in an instant, drinking in the sight of Gaby in the white fur coat and hat he bought her last winter. Lips parted, she begins to say something to him. He steps toward her in anticipation of a greeting, an accusation, anything after his long, self-imposed silence.

Gaby’s dark eyes dart from his unshaven face to the hand hanging against his side. Voice reedy with concern, she calls, “Napoleon?”

Injustice shoots down Illya’s spine, straightening it.

From the behind the closed kitchen door, Napoleon returns, “In here. With breakfast, as promised.”

Gaby softens, shedding her layers. She steps toward Illya to drape her coat and gloves over the back of the sofa, eyes never leaving his. “Are you eating with us?” she asks.

Illya’s chin jerks before he can register the scope of that question.

As if it makes no matter, Gaby says, “Fine,” and watches him walk toward her. When he is close enough to reach for her, she starts for the kitchen. Hesitates. Turns back to him, smoothing a cool hand over his stubble. “You look like you could use it.”

Illya leans into her touch, taking Gaby by the wrist to hold her there. Before she walks through that door, Illya is compelled to try one more tactic to put all of this back to rights. “I am sorry, Gaby,” he murmurs.

“Oh?” Amazement kicks up her eyebrows. They slant down just as quickly. “Are you sure you’d like to go first?”

He dismisses any apologies she might think he’s owed with a tsk. “I left you.”

“It’s the job,” she returns so evenly a less observant man would think she believes it, that she hasn’t minded. Illya sees the flinch at the turned-down corner of her lips. He sees her eyes harden to flint before they spark.

She slaps him once.

Then drags him down for a kiss that is as whole and consuming as they’ve shared. Hope ignites as desperation, and Illya pulls Gaby in as close as he can manage without surrendering her mouth.

It’s Gaby who burrows in even closer, her chin pressed sharply into his chest.

“Ptichka, I’ll make it right,” Illya swears, lips pressed to her crown.

“You mean the same?” She’s as breathless as he is.

His arms tighten around her. “Da. Da,” he says, eyes shut tight against her already shaking head.

She steps back. He has no choice but to let her, to hold onto just her hand, to listen to her say in hushed tones, “Illya, it’s no use. Don’t ask me what it will be. I only know it won’t be the same.”

Devastation does not feel how Illya expected — nauseous, aching, yes, but the ground doesn’t slant under his feet. What he feels most keenly is the strength in the slender fingers that grip his.

“You’re still coming?” she asks.

This time Illya gives her question its due consideration. Then he nods. The smile she grants him is close-lipped, cautious. The exact kind of smile he enshrined in his heart from the first.

Gaby squeezes his hand before letting go. From her purse she pulls out a thick file and flaps it to announce her entrance into the kitchen. “You’d better have provisions for lunch, too,” she tells Napoleon, holding the door open for Illya to pass through. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Back to them, Napoleon busies himself at the stovetop. “And the trouble with my meticulous plan is?”

“You just said it.” Gaby sidles up next to him, gesturing at the wooden spoon he stirs with. Napoleon, gaze darting for a moment to Illya, holds it up for Gaby to taste. She blows on it before sipping prettily.

Illya watches them as he takes a stiff place at the head of the small table. He has seen a version of this tableau dozens of times. Gaby is right. It is not the same. Neither is it what he feared. In his lap, his fist is clenched. Steady. His ears don’t ring. He pulls his father’s watch from his pocket and places it back on his wrist. The strap is fragile, but it holds.

“Never enough salt,” Gaby instructs Napoleon. “And if you think the three of us are wasting one more Christmas together on a mission — let alone New Year’s — you’ve got another thing coming.” She slants her eyes toward Illya as she says it, letting him know that threat very much includes him.

Blame it on the hangover, but Illya is finding relief in the strangest things this morning.


	4. Gaby's Hunch

Auriemma, Gaby has learned over the past few days, possesses a magnetic energy that never seems to flag. Despite her firm claim on youth, just watching Auriemma bustle around the auction space makes Gaby stifle yawns. Last night’s soiree hadn’t wound down until four in the morning and was followed up by a prompt champagne breakfast at ten and a luncheon at two. Gaby is on her second outfit of the day, a draped Balenciaga with a bow so large Illya had almost dropped cover in horror. As much as Gaby prefers blocked Saint-Laurent simplicity, Napoleon had made a valid point — the ruffled elegance of the Balenciaga winter collection better suits the deposed royalty aesthetic. Gaby floats a gloved hand over glittering jewelry as she takes the place she’s been making for herself at Auriemma’s side. 

Gold-plated pen in hand, Auriemma marks prices up and down for her secretaries to change. Gaby picks a marquess and insinuates that she overheard his plans to underbid the crushed velvet hatbox that once belonged to Albert the First of Belgium. Auriemma doubles the price, then taps a finger next to Gaby’s ear. “Clever passerotta. You are earning your diamonds.”

Gaby had better be earning something for all these tedious interactions. She adjusts the jeweled cross at her throat, another of Napoleon’s suggestions that made Illya sulk. The bug in the engagement ring still transmits fine — or it had the last time she’d teased Illya with it, their rooms close together but their covers far apart. The bug in the cross Veerle de Riquet de Caraman is never without is an UNCLE R&D upgrade that records without monitoring and has twice the range, making Gaby one hundred percent likely to catch someone letting slip a tie to THRUSH.

That is, of course, Gaby’s primary purpose on this mission. Landing Auriemma in jail for knowingly fencing ill-gotten goods is one thing. Getting the Russians back their imperial jewels is another. UNCLE’s real interest is finding the bottom of THRUSH’s funding scheme. Gaby has already recognized several faces from their registry of sympathizers, and she’s eager for an excuse for Illya to take photographs. To that end, Gaby comments about how charming it would be to add sightseeing to their itinerary for tomorrow.

“Countess Gradić has this weekend’s social calendar,” Auriemma says, using a jeweler’s eye to examine the sheen on a diadem. 

“Oh?” Gaby inquires, then needles, “It is good to hear you are taking your health into consideration and resting before the auction.”

Auriemma’s laughter tinkles. “I’ll rest when I’m in the grave, little one. No, no. I’m going up to the mountains to see an old friend.” Her smile seems to relish in the plan.

“Don’t say you’re leaving me out of any secret dealings.”

Auriemma bops her nose, and Gaby almost reaches for Auriemma’s poison-dipped comb. “It will be dreadfully boring for the younger set.”

“As if you’ve ever been accused of being boring,” Gaby fawns, laying it on thick. The more torn Auriemma is over whether to suspect Veerle, the less she will suspect Napoleon. 

Linking elbows, Auriemma draws Gaby out toward the hotel’s large day room, where afternoon cocktails are being served. “You’re a dear. But it’s better for you to stay. I feel dreadful I’ve been keeping you so busy that you haven’t had time to sightsee.” Neither of them acknowledges that isn’t precisely what Gaby had said. It’s clear enough that Auriemma has been having her tailed. Auriemma continues, as if struck by an idea, “You can have Jack as an escort.”

Inwardly, Gaby curses. Though he admitted nothing, she knows Napoleon must have steeled himself before returning to Auriemma’s cloying embrace. And still she keeps him at arm’s length. “Are you certain?” Gaby asks, letting her burning annoyance come through as a woman passed over. “I was under the impression Mr. Deveney and yourself were back on, as it were.”

“With a man like Jack,” Auriemma says, pausing at the best vantage point to admire him across the room, “it is best to let him think he has the upper hand. What is jealousy anyway? We are not built to love just one, no?”

Of their own volition, Gaby’s eyes flit to where Illya and the Russian delegation are walking toward the door. As marveled as she has been by Illya’s level-headedness, she can’t help wondering what it would be like to apologize to that man without being forgiven in an instant. It’s unfair, but she resents being deprived of confrontation. Unconditional love, she suspects, has many of the same conveniences as the unexamined variety. 

Auriemma makes a noise of disgust. “Finally, they leave. How insulting to be so obviously spied upon.” All the better to draw her attention away. “In the films, secret agents, they have class. You can’t have missed the hulking one. He looks bred in the field.”

Gaby uses the excuse of a tray loaded down with bellinis to unhook her arm and get a hold of herself. She takes a steadying drink. “He’d be more comfortable strapped to the front of a cart,” she fishes, making Auriemma titter. Gaby sends a reel out into the deep. “Though I confess I’m surprised to hear you say so. Your Mr. Deveney isn’t from anywhere of note if that wicked tongue of his can be believed.”

“And yet surely you recognize he has a certain something others in this distinguished room lack.” Off of Gaby’s agreeing hum, Auriemma says, “The nobility too often forget they all began as upstarts. Thieves by royal decree. Pedigree isn’t at all the same as quality, you see. There are undesirables even in the upper echelons.” Over the rim of her glass, Auriemma eyes Gaby as she sips. “We all have to prove our value.”

Gaby knows to give off rapt attention toward this speech, a variation of one she’s heard dozens of times since coming to work for UNCLE. The believers in the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity have rehearsed their recruitment speeches well. She maintains eye contact. “I hope to prove mine.”

Auriemma rests a knowing hand on Gaby’s shoulder, beckoning for Napoleon. “You enjoy yourself in the city. We will talk more when I return.”

Gaby has to fight to keep herself still, to keep from gripping Napoleon’s arm in giddy triumph. No need to wait around until the auction to see if any THRUSH bigwigs show up. Auriemma isn’t just a means to an end for THRUSH — she’s a lynchpin in their organization, Gaby is sure of it. 

Napoleon protests Auriemma’s weekend plans like any dutiful lover would. The act sits in Gaby’s stomach like a stone. Napoleon's’ instincts are right on, as usual, as he angles for an invitation to remain at Auriemma’s side. Auriemma stays firm — “It is only right,” she says, “after the great help Veerle has been, that Jack be at her disposal.” Innuendo laces through ‘disposal.’ Whether pairing them up means she mistrusts either or both of them is moot at this point. They’ll be joining her in the mountains soon enough, invitation or no.

Even in the midst of his disappointed goodbyes with Auriemma, Napoleon doesn’t seem to miss the gleam in Gaby’s eye. When they’re alone he asks, “That excited to be followed around a Christmas market by a testy Russian and a few hired goons, are you?”

Allowing herself a broad smile, Gaby takes his elbow. “Sounds like a date.”

They take one of Auriemma’s cars, no doubt bugged to high heaven, back to Gaby’s hotel. In the backseat, Gaby opens Napoleon’s palm, claims to have picked up palmistry from a servant, and taps out A-U-R-I-E-T-H-R-U-S-H. He flinches. She tells him, according to his lifeline, he is going to find the satisfaction he seeks even sooner than expected. A snow-bound adventure is in his future. Napoleon takes that fortune rather grimly. Gaby supposes she can’t fault anyone for being upset to learn their ex-lover is a Nouveau-Nazi, but she has cracked the case. She would think a little appreciation would be in order. 

At the hotel, Gaby goes up to change into moderately warmer attire. Napoleon waits in the lobby, using the opportunity to make a business call to New York City. 

Logistics settled, Napoleon escorts her out of the lobby with his granite jaw stuck shut. Walking down the Piazza di Spagna, she spots Illya dwarfing a Vespa, glowering into a guidebook. Gaby darts a glance between the two of them — studies in opposites and yet sometimes she’d never know it. 

Well, their bad moods simply won’t do. This is Rome — the Eternal City — at Christmas time. Criminal not to be romanced under all these twinkling lights. 

Their first stop is purely logistical, a tourist shop on a side street near the steps funded more by INTERPOL than customers. Pretending to try on earrings, Gaby puts in one of the earpieces Illya left for her and Napoleon. The line crackles to life. “Hallo, Illya,” Gaby murmurs, fixing her bangs in the mirror of a sunglasses display.

“Woman, blue scarf,” is all he says back. 

The woman in the blue scarf trails them out of the store at a reasonable distance. Illya reports two men in heavy parkas spying on him spying on Jack Deveney and Veerle de Riquet de Caraman, ostensibly on behalf of the KGB. It’s a merry troupe, Gaby decides, and has Napoleon stop to buy them some fresh roasted chestnuts.

They’re in Rome right on time for the Novena, the Italian celebration of the nine days of Christmas. At her sweetest request, Illya intones from the guidebook about the tradition marking the shepherds’ journey to Bethlehem. Napoleon fills in with more colorful tales about the La Befana, an elderly witch who declined to travel with the Wise Men. Regretting it, local lore has it that she searches for the Christ child every Christmas, handing out presents to children as she does. Even without her Communist upbringing, Gaby doesn’t think she’d go in much for organized religion, but the stories are charming. The nativity scenes they pass glow with a warmth that seems to brighten even Napoleon. Or perhaps that’s the chestnuts, which he pops two at a time.

When they arrive, Napoleon announces, “The Piazza Navona Christmas Market,” gesturing with pride — as if he himself had set the whole winter wonderland up for her. He’d done much the same in London and New York, and Gaby had rolled her eyes in the former and teased him mercilessly in the latter. This evening, she just grins and squeezes his elbow. No snow this far south, but the decorations more than make up for that. They drift through the rows of stalls and people, stopping to admire craftwork here and artistry there. 

They buy mulled wine from a vendor, steaming hot and not too sweet. “Buy some for yourself when you swing by,” Gaby recommends Illya. “You’ll like it.” He grunts his sulkiest grunt in acknowledgment. A year or two ago, she would assume he was turning his nose up at bourgeois decadence. Now her free arm hangs down her side, and she wishes it were hiked up to that angle she’s grown so accustomed to. There is a long list of things Illya only allows himself to thoroughly enjoy if he can tell himself they are for her benefit.

It is gratifying, then, to spot something entirely for Illya’s benefit. Eye on a watchmaker’s store with a light still glowing, Gaby nudges Napoleon. They share a conspirator’s nod and veer away to disappear into the crowd. Inside to tiny shop, Napoleon and Gaby set about scouring the unorganized collection for the pieces they’ve been seeking for months. 

Static fills her earpiece as Illya comes closer into range. “Come — in — Why — Come in. Is something wrong?”

“Agent Solo and I must complete a side-mission,” Gaby says, hoping Illya’s ears go pink for her silky tone. “Top secret.”

Napoleon’s hand goes up, triumphant, and Gaby comes over to inspect his find. The brand matches, but they’ve found and discarded several Pobeda watch straps before. Though this one’s leather is the closest color match she’s seen. And — she counts the holes — they’re the same number as Illya’s, but with none of the fraying. In fact, the strap is in as good a condition as the watch case they found in Kiev. Gaby’s eyebrows shoot up. Napoleon puts his finger to his lips, grinning in confirmation. He offers it to her.

She shakes her head, unable to resist the opportunity to meddle. “Napoleon, well done.”   


Her earpiece buzzes, as she knows Napoleon’s must, too. “What? What is it?”

Gaby lets her smile seep into her words. “The perfect gift.”

Illya couldn’t sound more wounded saying, “Gaby, if you would like a watch, allow me to — ”

“Not my perfect gift, Schmusebärchen.” This time, Gaby knows Illya’s ears must have gone pink from the teasing, private endearment. “Napoleon gets to strike your name off his list, and I can’t say I’m not jealous. Our Illya is notoriously hard to shop for, isn’t he, Napoleon?”

Napoleon arches a brow. She arches one back. The line doesn’t so much as crackle. Gaby chooses to imagine Illya with his ears burning against the collar of his wool greatcoat, stunned and embarrassed and secretly warmed by the attention.

Shaking his head, Napoleon goes to pay. Inwardly, Gaby sighs. Of course, Illya will be wary, too, of Napoleon’s generosity, her own tactics. Illya isn’t the kind of man for whom gifts are received lightly.

As they walk through the stalls once more, Napoleon fills Illya’s silence with stories of Christmas decorations around the world. “Christmas in Tokyo is by far the strangest,” he intimates, “But Berlin — ” Napoleon smiles, patting the back of Gaby’s gloved hand to soften the pronouncement. “Berlin has the best markets in the world.”

Gaby swallows. Illya’s silence intensifies if such a thing were possible. In East Germany, Christmas markets were transformed into so-called ‘socialist festivals for peace.’ The traditions continued underground and under wraps, but she’d never seen anything in her Berlin to justify Napoleon’s endorsement. After a moment’s thought, Gaby says, “I’d like to see that. With both of you.”

Illya grunts his softest grunt. Napoleon tells her, “Anything you like.” Their first Christmas together in London, Napoleon had needled Illya something awful, calling him the actual Grinch who stole her Christmas, and she’d pretended to be above their bickering but enjoyed it far too much. Punishing Illya for the sins of his countrymen no longer holds the same base appeal. Not for her and not for Napoleon. Politically speaking, they’d come to agree that none of them holds higher ground, mired in the trenches of nationalism as they all are.

After sampling sweet breads and biscuits — “Dessert before dinner? Spoiled boy,” she teases, and Napoleon does something positively sinful with his eyebrows — they stroll toward the River. On the Lungotevere Tor di Nona, they pass any number of fine restaurants. Napoleon waves them away, promising her something truly special. That turns out to be a hole in a wall with no more than five tables. 

The owner comes out to greet Napoleon by Jack Deveney’s name and lets him slip back into the kitchen to help whip up a dish he promises will be her new favorite. “No feet, please,” she reminds him, sipping her wine. Alone, Gaby worries a piece of bread in one hand and toys with the necklace in the other. In a low murmur, she says, “It does smell quite good in here. I’ll have something packed up for you.” She has an image in her head she can’t stand — Illya literally left out in the cold. “Aubergine parmigiana?”

“Thank you,” he says.

“Illya, I meant what I said. I would like to go to Berlin with you. I think — ” Gaby tilts her profile toward a window, hoping he can see. “I think it would be good for us. For our…well.” She thought she could say the word ‘future,’ but it sticks in her throat. They haven’t talked again just the two of them in days. Longing glances, maybe. No stolen kisses. The mission is always Illya’s best excuse for compartmentalizing, and Gaby would be lying if she didn’t admit she borrows that coping mechanism whenever it suits her. What can she say? She shut the door on the future they’d only just gotten to the point of talking about. The one she wants for them is too hazy, too beyond the pale to voice aloud. “Illya?” she prompts, almost a whisper.

“If you want me there, I am there,” he says, so lowly, so matter-of-factly, Gaby has to press her fingertips to her lips. Her brooding about unexamined versus unconditional aside, the gift Illya has given her is unwavering love, and she’ll never be spoiled for it.

“Thank you,” she says.

Napoleon returns then with a parmesan-encrusted appetizer. A few minutes later, Illya warns them the woman has lost the blue scarf and gained an escort. They are seated at the table beside Napoleon and Gaby, effectively restricting their dinner conversation to the merits of Italian tourism, what a shame it is to see Europe brought so low, and blatant innuendo.  

At the end of the meal, Napoleon carries out Illya’s dinner and their shopping from the market in one hand. The other is slipped around Gaby’s waist. They’re leaning in as they walk, murmuring nonsense.

“You are laying it on too heavy,” Illya critiques from his spot at the cafe next door. What animosity there is in it, Gaby decides is for show.

She burrows in closer to Napoleon, the spice of his cologne enveloping her. “The target all but instructed me to sleep with Jack here — we must flirt. Our lives may depend on it.”

Filled with several glasses of wine and an incredible amount of truly special food, Napoleon is more his rosey-cheeked self. “Pain of torture, Peril, I’ve never enjoyed an outing less.”

Illya mutters something in Russian Gaby almost doesn’t catch. But it clicks, making her smile and flush: “ _ Then _ ,” Illya said, “ _ you are a fool _ .”

“About a great many things,” Napoleon agrees, crowding Gaby against a low wall. He nuzzles against her, his stubble raising goosebumps on her skin. This was how it kindled for her. High-stakes play-pretend and that irresistible urge to give in to longings she kept hidden from herself. Velvet lips brush her earlobe, all business. “On your signal, Illya.”

Somehow refraining from muttering, ‘This is not the Russian way,’ Illya knocks over a trash can. 

“It’s one of those damned Commies,” Napoleon marvels loud enough for their tails to hear.

Then the chase is on. Hand in hand, Napoleon and Gaby duck and dodge Illya, who strategically lets them get way out in front of Auriemma’s hired goons. The point is to lose them without raising suspicion, and — jumping into a cab while Illya takes the tails down a riverside road — they manage just that without breaking a sweat or a heel.

As the cab pulls out, Napoleon says, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — that man runs like a machine.” He stares after Illya with naked admiration. This was how it dawned on her. Dismissive remarks paired with looks that were anything but. Illya catching on, reacting strangely. Overly aggressive with Napoleon usually but then a flash of over-fondness. And she with her hidden longings and keen observations plotting away in the foreground.

She sighs, falling back against the seat and Napoleon’s shoulder. “If Waverly comes through and we make it to the mountains tonight, Auriemma could be in handcuffs by this time tomorrow. We could be in Berlin before the markets close.”

“You seem to be plotting quite a Christmas for us.” Napoleon hesitates a moment but seems to break through whatever resistance to unnecessary proximity he’s been putting up since she arrived. He rests his chin atop her head and folds around her. “Maybe New Year’s in Havana? ‘May auld acquaintance be forgot.’”

Gaby sighs again. Put like that, it does seem indulgent. “Is it so wrong to want a do-over? We made a hash of it with him.”

Napoleon tenses almost imperceptibly. There are a number of questions to be had. He settles on this one: “A hash of what, exactly?” 

“I don’t know exactly,” Gaby admits, tired of being the sole arbitrator of this situation. “Something good, I think. For all of us.”

“A worthy aim,” Napoleon replies in a way that tells her he wants whatever that is as much as she does. Mistrusts it even more.

But he relaxes into her in spite of that. It’s a good sign, Gaby infers. There have been a lot of those since they came back into each other’s orbits, more than she could have hoped for. She has a hunch she’s been nursing that maybe — just maybe — they’ll be able to figure this out together.


	5. Napoleon's Battle

Napoleon and Gaby are packing up the tactical necessities when Illya joins them at the safehouse. Gaby sits him down with his takeaway dinner, eager to describe the full picture of the intel she has been gathering all week.

Letting it wash over him, Napoleon pours himself a drink and sits on the sofa. He offered up the location of Auriemma’s favorite mountain getaway during his call to New York. It had taken a few hours to sort out, but a private plane would be waiting for them at the nearest airstrip and an UNCLE support unit would arrive in the morning. Their only job would be to witness, record, and instigate a confession. THRUSH and UNCLE may be in a tight race when it comes to advanced weaponry, but UNCLE has the current lead in long-range listening devices. And the element of surprise in their favor, since most of THRUSH believes them to be a pipedream at best. Gaby wraps up her report with her thoughts on which THRUSH doyens they would catch scheming with Auriemma.

Illya names a few, and Gaby nods. With relish, she posits, “But what if Auriemma’s ‘old friend’ is Colonel Sebastian Moran himself?”

“That,” Illya says with no small amount of pride, “would mean you win the office pool, ptichka.”

Gaby preens.

Napoleon doesn’t offer a reaction. He’s too busy wondering how this turn could have come as a shock to him. He of all people should understand what Auriemma is capable of.

Gaby makes herself comfortable on the other end of the sofa, body turned toward Napoleon. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

“Eager to have this done with,” Napoleon says, swishing his whiskey. “Cortina d'Ampezzo offers the most beautiful slopes to the most beautiful people in the world — or at least the richest. It would be a shame to spend too much time working.”

Elbow propped on the back of the sofa, Gaby fixes him with a look that’s almost disgusted by the flimsiness of his misdirection. Hunched over his dinner, Illya pauses to back up her stare, though the lift of his eyebrows tells Napoleon he isn’t quite sure what she’s after.

Napoleon opens his mouth. “I was just thinking.” Closes his mouth. Sighs. “My relationship with Auriemma was very formative,” he says with care. “One can’t help but wonder if…” It’s all very obvious. So why should he have such trouble articulating what’s been stabbing at him? “If I had gone down a — a different path.” He amends, “If I had kept along the path I was choosing for myself, I might have ended up on a very different side of things. Her side.” THRUSH’s side. Napoleon lied about his age to go and fight the Nazis, but their ideology trussed up in THRUSH’s twisted splendor and sophistication? He fears his ego would have demanded he became the youngest doyen in the pack, hang the consequences.

From across the sofa, Gaby’s warm eyes meet his with true empathy. He can imagine similar thoughts running on a loop through her own mind given her family connections. She makes an elegant twist of her hand, reminiscent of the wry whims of fate.

For his part, Illya swallows his last bite and balls up his napkin, finished. “That woman is snake. You are — ” he tilts his head “ — eel, maybe. Not snake.”

Napoleon shares a side-long look with Gaby, who presses a smile. “Good of you to say, Peril,” Napoleon replies and searches the bottom of his glass for a logical reason he should feel so touched.

Illya shrugs and moves on to debriefing the tactical notes Waverly sent over by long distance xerography. Napoleon knows Illya well enough not to feel dismissed. To a man as staunch as he is, beliefs are facts and facts are useless to debate — a worldview that never fails to drive Napoleon up the proverbial wall. Except for, it would seem, just this moment.

They leave the safehouse together, loosening up on discretion in favor of rushing headlong into danger. Napoleon doesn’t know why he should be so disconcerted about it. This is usually how these things go with them. Then he supposes he’s never had anything so personal at stake.

Not strictly true. There was always his life, something of so little consequence to the CIA that Napoleon himself began to disregard it. There was also, improbable as it is, the lives of the two people squeezed in the tiny lift with him. Napoleon looks them over. A Russian roughly the height and weight of a scrappy grizzly bear and a hollow-boned East German with a tongue as sharp as a black eagle’s talons. The wry whims of fate indeed.

Gaby, who naturally ended up with both her hands free, takes hold of an elbow each from Illya and Napoleon. Over her fur hat, they split an assessing glance. Illya squares his shoulders, careful not to jostle Napoleon, and looks ahead with dignity. Napoleon has been prepared to duck a punch to the nose for days. Illya’s quiet acceptance is as perplexing as it is unnerving.

It falls to Gaby to drive them to the airstrip and, without a word, it is Gaby who slips into the one pilot’s chair in the single-engine plane. Leaving Napoleon and Illya to sit side-by-side in the only two seats available, an armrest between them. Illya holds himself with more than his usual Soviet stiffness, chin resolutely turned toward the window. Napoleon takes up what space he can, in the habit of sprawling when brooding. And brood he does for the entire one-hour flight.

There is Auriemma to consider. Her betrayal so many years ago was the worst day of his life. Alongside that truth there is now another: it was the best thing that could have happened to him, given the circumstances. Napoleon lives quite comfortably with contradiction, but he has to admit to himself that one rankles.

There is also the matter of his partners. Gaby has an agenda all her own. That’s nothing new, but the speed at which she’s sucking them into her orbit is dizzying. Years of incremental innoculations had led to Havana. Gaby and Napoleon paired up on intimate missions. Illya and Napoleon, whiskey-drunk, sharing confidences like grizzled war buddies. Illya and Gaby ignoring paper-thin walls, fucking behind half-open doors. In Havana, Gaby had taken hold of Napoleon, turned her big brown eyes on Illya, and said, “Let him stay. Please.” The tacit agreement was that Napoleon was meant only to watch. Perhaps Gaby was counting on him being true to form — unable to accept a first offer, always keen to press his luck for more.

Illya shifts in his seat, and Napoleon feels the measured movement in his entire body. Staring even harder out the pitch black window, Illya stretches his hands, massive and fine-boned. Those hands had gripped Napoleon at his nape, his waist, his thighs. He remembers the feel of them, their surprising chill compared to the heat at the core of him. Napoleon remembers the way Illya had taken his cock in hand, in challenge. Havana was a fever dream.

The spectacular fallout was a nightmare for which they are all to blame. And yet Gaby seems to think she can pull off some kind of Christmas miracle. Napoleon has been rooting for her from the moment she opened that sass-trap of hers and let him have it. Only, he doesn’t know if he has the energy to help with this scheme.

He still tastes the blood in his mouth from the last time Illya kissed him. He still hears the adjoining door slam shut on their afterglow. No sooner had Napoleon sealed his lips over Gaby’s sated mouth and slid out of her warmth than Illya had snatched her up and carried her away, leaving Napoleon alone on the bed, chest heaving. Gaby tried to make up for it later on. Napoleon made it known it hadn’t bothered him a bit. Illya took every evil thought about himself he’d no doubt internalized from boyhood and tried to goad Napoleon into beating it out of him.

The idea of the three of them — barely functional on their own — setting aside their neuroses long enough to come together in any meaningful way is laughable. Laughable. And somehow Napoleon is certain the joke is on him.

Though he can’t see the mountains, he knows from the drop in temperature that they’ve almost arrived. In his window pane, Napoleon catches Illya’s reflection, softened by the murky dark. The longer Illya stares, the more Napoleon believes his partner is on the verge of saying something he won’t be able to take back. But Illya sets and turns his chin, and it’s as if the moment never happened.

Gaby sets the plane down just outside of Cortina d'Ampezzo proper. The airstrip is an auxiliary resistance installation used for spying and smuggling during the war and after. The few old timers still manning it set the three of them up with confirmations delivered by wireless and separate sleeping quarters.

Napoleon stares at the ceiling going over safe-cracking techniques in his mind, that satisfying click-click-snap, until he slips into a fitful dream that transports him into silk sheets on a four-poster bed surrounded by so many buckets of champagne and caviar on ice the air turns frigid. He rolls over seeking warmth and finds cold-blooded Auriemma, who calls him passerotto and dissolves to brittle snakeskin in his arms.

At breakfast, Napoleon marvels at military rations and coffee so flavorless that surely they can’t still be in Italy. Gaby purses her lips at the rings under his eyes, while Illya coordinates the strategy with their McKay, their secondary unit lead.

The plans Waverley sent over call for a day of subterfuge with Gaby as Napoleon’s backup and Illya lurking around the grounds. In the dead of night, the UNCLE secondary unit will surround the place and make all the necessary arrests. Effective and efficient, how INTERPOL and the KGB prefer it.

But Gaby, queen of the long con, huffs at Waverly’s clearly reluctant capitulations. “Gentlemen,” she says, standing to gain the attention of the room. “Why drag this out?” She is, Napoleon notes, pointedly not looking at him with any sympathy. Kind of her. “I have an idea,” Gaby announces, “that might make things quicker.” Her idea is Ashgabat with a Bucharest twist. Step one: gain Auriemma’s trust. Step two: procure an introduction and a future invitation. Step three: discover the plot. Step four: divide and conquer. All before dinner. It’s a compelling strategy, so much so that McKay doesn’t even balk after Gaby provides the code Waverly gave her to override his orders in the field.

That is how Napoleon finds himself behind the wheel of a Maserati. He winds up rapidly icing-over mountain roads with Gaby side-seat driving. Conveniently, she has forgotten it was he who got them down the Alps safely last February, Gaby the only one of them small enough to operate a machine gun from the trunk while Illya clung to the roof. It is the trunk that is weighed down this time, and on a few hairpin turns the Maserati’s bumper scrapes asphalt. Muffled Slavic curses mingle with Gaby’s critiques, and Napoleon begins to feel more like himself.  
  
The chalet is stunning, dark wood and frosted glass set sprawling in a low, secluded valley. They take the narrow access road up to ornate brass gates. A break in the worst of the snowfall allows Napoleon rolls down the window to flash his winningest smile at the male model-cum-security guard and the camera behind him. The guard leans into his earpiece like he’s posing for  _Vogue_ , then lets them through with a terse nod. Napoleon angles to a stop underneath the awning, buttoning his suit as he exits the car.   
  
Flanked by four more genetically-gifted guards, Auriemma floats down the front entrance stairs. “Darling, what a surprise. You missed me, I suppose.” Her eyes flash as Gaby sticks her white-gloved hand out of the open door, and Napoleon helps her stand. “I do so love unexpected guests. Lends the whole party such an air of excitement.” In unison, the guards shift to flash the guns strapped to their hips.   
  
“Uninvited, perhaps, but never empty-handed.” Napoleon, Gaby beside him, opens the trunk with a flourish, revealing Illya’s massive frame stuffed inside. He does a marvelous impression of himself surly and passed out.   
  
Sighing with pleasure, Auriemma glides over to have a better look. “Oh, how fabulous. My very own KGB agent.”   
  
“Well, we thought to ourselves, Veerle and I — What to get the woman who has everything?”   
  
Auriemma squeezes Napoleon’s and Gaby’s chins between her thumbs and forefingers. “You two spoil me.”

A snap of her fingers, and the guards set upon the unenviable task of unwedging Illya’s dead weight from the compact space. When the giant gives a pseudo-reflexive twitch, the roughest of the guards hits the ice with a thud. Hiding his own tiny smile, Napoleon suggests a crowbar.

Auriemma hooks her claws around his elbow and Gaby’s, pulling them toward the stairs. “I am so relieved you’re here. I will admit to a little surveillance out of concern for you both, and when I found out you’d gone missing I feared the worst.”  
  
“We feared the same,” Gaby says, playing the icier character of the two, “when we realized you’d been keeping things from us.”   
  
“For your own good, believe me. You’re so young, and Napoleon — Has he told you his real name? Ghastly, isn’t it?” Double doors part to let them through all in a row. “Napoleon has just been let out of a very long prison sentence. What an experience.” She hugs his arm. “I couldn’t very well drag you into something so risky after all you’ve been through.”   
  
“Aurie, could you think so little of me?” Napoleon asks, plaintive. “Had I wanted to live out my days in quiet comfort, I wouldn’t have sought you out.”   
  
“And I may be young, but I don’t expect reward gained where there is no risk taken,” Gaby boasts in that stunning Dutch accent she has mastered. If all goes to plan, Veerle de Riquet de Caraman might well become her Jack Deveney.   
  
Stopping in the foyer, Auriemma turns to stand in front of them. Her small household staff, dressed in traditional maid’s and butler’s uniforms but looking like French pinups, stand at attention behind her. “I am moved. And eager to bring you into my inner circle, really. But before we go on, there is one precaution you must permit me to take.”   
  
Two snaps this time, and a valet and a maid set upon Napoleon, two maids on Gaby. They make short work of stripping them down to their underclothes and even go so far as to shine a flashlight in their back molars. Napoleon gives off an air of enjoying the manhandling, while Gaby exudes affronted majesty — especially when they break open her necklace, which Illya had debugged as soon as she laid out her plan.

A technological marvel of a machine is wheeled out next, something like a computer with a metal detector attached to it. Gaby pretends to be frightened of it, which amuses Auriemma. In reality, Gaby has encountered it before, the first time in Caracas and the last time no doubt in the UNCLE R&D labs. THRUSH seems to think it’s some kind of foolproof work of evil genius, able to detect and disrupt any frequency. The UNCLE techs have two tricks up their sleeves. The first is that their patented listening devices have gotten so small and flat they can stash them in places no one would think to look. The second is that they have figured out a way to rig their best devices not to turn on until after being triggered by low-wave radiation from THRUSH tech.  
  
Satisfied, Auriemma offers them plush robes and slippers and bids them to follow her into the chalet’s ornamented library. Once they sit, it’s all tea, cakes, and long-winded plots of how to fund a world takeover one antiques sale at a time. Auriemma makes it clear that she is a true believer in THRUSH. It’s therapeutic, actually, listening to her simper and rhapsodize about rightful hierarchies and benevolent genocide. Whatever Napoleon might have become, who he is now finds her chillingly cruel and a touch ridiculous. Auriemma is a stranger to him, and Napoleon is the better man for it.   
  
Wisely remaining cautious, Auriemma sends Gaby and Napoleon off to separate wings of the chalet to dress for the luncheon, a valet and a maid accompanying them. He has no time to speak to Gaby in private, nor to sneak off to see where they might have stashed Illya. Fortunately, they don’t require any extra plotting. Gaby had called the play, and the three of them know their parts well.   
  
As promised, there are five other guests joining them for the meal. One is Herr Doktor Abelard Böhm, THRUSH’s top gamma radiation specialist. The other four are two women and two men, all with decades of elegant living behind them, none of whom are recognizable from any intel reports. Gaby conveys in that discreet way of hers how put out she is by this. Napoleon is heartened. THRUSH is more protective of their funding than they are of their technology. He has long imagined that their most guarded secret must also be their most vulnerable point.

The THRUSH leaders are circumspect toward Jack and Veerle, not mentioning anything more incriminating than oblique references to the surprise after-lunch entertainment — which, in THRUSH company, usually means a show of torture. Auriemma makes mention of a “foreign guest of honor, very far from friends,” and Gaby doesn’t flinch but Napoleon recognizes the promise of retribution behind the smile she shares with Auriemma. A clock strikes noon. Wouldn’t be long now. The snowfall will delay the arrival of their backup, but not the planned disruption.

After lunch, it’s cocktails and schmoozing in the library. This is the area in which Gaby excels — making herself irresistibly attractive as a new confidant. It isn’t long before she sends Napoleon a toast from across the room, verifying that Veerle de Riquet de Caraman has procured an invitation for herself outside of Auriemma’s influence.

And not a moment too soon. The staff enter to put out chairs arranged in two rows facing a curtained wall. Napoleon takes the seat next to Auriemma, Gaby on her other side.

One of the doyens, introduced as Herr Doktor Abelard Böhm, stands to deliver a speech regarding his long-standing friendship with Auriemma. “For years, she has lent my work her keen eye for beauty and elegance in all things. The auction is her brainchild and will fund our mission for decades to come. But her real genius is for revenge.” Böhm presses a button and the curtain parts, revealing a small chamber enclosed by thick glass. Under the spotlight are a set of jewels identical at this distance to the Romanov pieces he’d last seen in Rome. “As you know, all the jewels to be sold at the auction are perfect replicas.”

So much for his contact at the Louvre’s authentication. Gaby puts on an affronted look, but Napoleon leans in to skim a kiss on Auriemma’s jaw. “Naughty girl. No wonder you never let me have more than a peek.”

“A woman,” she drawls, moving her hand to his upper thigh, “must have her secrets.”

Napoleon pretends to be interested in where her fingers are moving to, but he’s listening keenly as Böhm explains, “When it became clear we had piqued the KGB’s interest, our dear Aurie commissioned me to add a special enhancement to the Romanov replicas.” The spotlight glows a deadly shade of red. With THRUSH’s typical elevated drama, Böhm enunciates, “Gamma radiation.” The room breaks out into applause. When it dies down, Böhm explains that his formula causes the isotopes to decay at an accelerated rate when exposed to heat thirty-seven degrees Celsius or above. Malevolent chuckling all around.

“Imagine,” Auriemma trills. She stands to address the room. “The wives of the most prominent, most corrupt Soviet leaders receiving these monuments to the rightful rule of the aristocracy as presents. Imagine those hypocrites at Soviet parties, flushed with champagne, but feeling weaker and weaker. Poisoning the other guests until not one upstart Soviet peasant stands.”

More applause. Napoleon claps and stares hard at the beautiful, twisted stranger in front of him in all her horrible glory. Fingertips brush his earlobe, and he glances over to see Gaby resting her arm along the back of the empty chair between them. She is reminding him how foolish this pontificating is, that it is being recorded, all while looking flushed with sinister excitement. Agent Teller never breaks character, but she always finds a way to let her real self be present in any situation. Napoleon looks forward to learning that trick as he unlearns a hell of a lot of other things.

Auriemma snaps, sending two guards out of the room. “Well. You won’t have to imagine. My close associates — ” Napoleon and Gaby turn and tip their glasses on cue “ — have brought us all the most unexpected Christmas gift.” The smile that snakes across her face is beatific. “A KGB agent to demonstrate Herr Doktor Böhm’s vision.”

The delighted guests raise their hands to applaud. Very distantly, from underneath the floorboards, comes the sound of a small explosion, followed by pistol pops.

The room erupts in motion. Gaby and Napoleon let Auriemma take the lead but are sure to be underfoot at strategic moments — enough to slow down the response time but not arouse any more suspicion than necessary. When the dissatisfied rumblings of Böhm and the others get loud enough for Auriemma to overhear, Napoleon suggests to her that perhaps it is time for her guests to depart. She pauses her tirade at her guards long enough to make the arrangements.

Meanwhile, Illya has barricaded himself in the cellar and is no doubt wreaking merry destruction. Armed with just a cigarette case set on a timer to explode, the man can work miracles.

After the departure  Böhm and the others, the few staff members left cluster in the library with Gaby, Auriemma, and Napoleon. Squeezing Auriemma swiftly — overcome by the thought that this will be the last time he has to pretend to be the man she made him — Napoleon takes charge of the effort to open the cellar door.

From inside, Illya discharges a weapon twice so Napoleon knows to motion the guards ahead of him and close the door behind. He waits at the top of the stairs for Illya to emerge from a cloud of gas, cornsilk hair sticking up at all angles from his mask. Illya adjusts the guns he holds to give the signal. Thumbs up, everyone is dead.

Napoleon takes the two Walther PPKs, holding them aloft in either hand, while Illya discards the mask. “Ready?” he asks and hands over the weapons.

“Are you?” Illya’s gruff concern sticks to Napoleon’s ribs.

“Oh, I think I’ve wallowed in the past long enough. Onward.” Napoleon offers a bold grin and an unobstructed shot at wiping it off his face. “You’ve held back admirably. Here’s your chance.”

Illya spins a pistol to crack his nose as planned, but he doesn't lift his elbow to strike.

The hesitation is too touching to trust. For the sake of the mission and his own morbid curiosity, he goads, “Come now, Illya. This shouldn’t be difficult. Think of those sleepless nights since my confession, imagining Gaby and I together.” Napoleon slides his hands in his pockets, tipping forward to intimate, “Remembering Gaby and I together.”

Illya glares. On the nozzle, his hand goes tight and pale.

Napoleon flicks his gaze back up to lock onto Illya’s cold, blue stare. From deep in the chalet, the clock chimes, reminding Napoleon it’s now or never. He plasters on his widest, most devilish smile. “We both know you want to hurt me.” He draws in his brows as if he just realized something too pitiable to mention in polite company. “How…badly you want it.”  

The bottom doesn’t fall out behind Illya’s eyes. He stays contained, his mouth compresses. He seems to be struggling to come terms with something. Then the distant sound of gunfire draws his attention toward the library. Meeting Napoleon’s alarmed gaze, Illya says at last, “I’m sorry,” and clips him across the face with the butt of the gun.

Blood sprays, but Napoleon can tell before his knees even hit the ground that his nose isn’t broken. He’s so stunned by pain he thinks he might have hallucinated the apology.

Illya doesn’t give Napoleon a chance to steady himself before initiating their charade. Hand twisting up his collar, Illya half-carries, half-drags him across the foyer.

Out of the library door, the last remaining guard hobbles out as fast as his good leg can carry him. Another butler stands with one foot out the front entrance and yells at him in Italian to hurry up their escape, which will be short-lived either due to inclement weather or to the UNCLE secondary unit. 

Still, this was not part of the plan. If the grip on the back of Napoleon’s neck is any indication, Illya is none-too-pleased with the deviation. Then, he never is with anything that puts Gaby at further risk. Usually that ‘anything’ is Gaby herself.

Sure enough, Gaby is at the center of the fracas in the library. She has done a fine job, having already vanquished two butlers and a maid with the gun she must have acquired from the guard. Shrieking in a truly intimidating slew of German, Gaby uses the empty weapon to bludgeon the two remaining maids, who are attempting to fight her tooth and nail into the open door of the chamber. Auriemma stands with her back to the door, attention focused on a key code panel. Finished, she reaches out to help the maids drag Gaby into what might have been Illya’s torture chamber.

Illya halts the chaos with a warning shot. Napoleon, playing stunned, dazed, and injured, slumps onto the very handwoven Ottoman rug he once stole for Auriemma right out of the Topkapi Palace. Auriemma shouts his name. Gaby shouts Illya’s. Half a second later, both maids crumple at Gaby’s feet sporting matching bullet holes between each of their perfectly symmetrical eyes.

Then Auriemma yanks the long comb from her hair and jabs it into Gaby’s neck. “It’s poison!” she cries, freezing the tableau once more.

Seeming unconcerned with the blood beading down her delicate neck, Gaby greets, “Hallo, Illya. Any trouble?”

“There will be,” Illya warns, leveling his PK and what Napoleon imagines is his darkest scowl at Auriemma.

“Ah-ah,” Auriemma chides, scraping the comb further along Gaby’s skin. Gaby doesn’t cry out. Her wide eyes are trained on Illya, managing his rage and the situation even from a place of vulnerability. Auriemma sneers, “Only I know the antidote to save the life of your Soviet whore.”

Physostigmine, Napoleon knows, because he knows nightshade is Auriemma’s poison of choice. The secondary unit will have plenty on hand. Napoleon covers a reassuring squeeze on Illya’s knee with a weak attempt to get to his own. “Aurie — Veerle — I don’t — I don’t understand.”

Auriemma switches her attention to him, easing up on Gaby as she does. Auriemma’s cold, dark eyes slate over as she assesses his bloody face for damage. “My poor passerotto.”

Trying to force the plan back on track, Illya grabs a fist full of Napoleon’s hair and presses the nozzle of the gun against the back of his skull. “Da, I have your kept boy. You have my woman. So we trade.”

Napoleon holds Auriemma’s gaze. She tries for a show of tears. “I should have left you tied to my bed, kept you uninvolved,” she mourns. “But when you get to be my age you are bound to make the same mistake twice.”

Betrayal is coming, and Napoleon is unsurprised. Gaby and Illya assumed they could use him to manipulate Auriemma, but he knew better. The surprise is that he feels nothing. Three days ago, her disregard would have stung his pride. Thirteen years ago it had nearly killed his sense of self.

“I will spare her life for one thing and one thing only,” Auriemma tells Illya. “My freedom.”

Acceptance is an empty feeling, nothing like the hot and cold of anger, agony. Gaby’s eyes go round with offense. Illya’s palm goes flat on Napoleon's skull, almost cradling it. These small gestures fill the hollow space in his chest. It’s a bittersweet revelation — Auriemma has no more power over him, but Napoleon has made himself more vulnerable than ever.

Illya shifts the gun nozzle to Napoleon’s temple. “You think I’m bluffing?”

“She doesn’t,” Napoleon answers. “Her freedom is everything to her.” He straightens, casting around the room for an elegant solution. The open chamber door offers an enticingly poetic one.  For the benefit of Illya’s twitchy trigger finger, Napoleon says, “Death would be far kinder than capture.” He holds Gaby’s gaze, transmitting a message with his enunciated words: “Torture she could never abide.” Brushing off his knees and buttoning his sodden jacket, Napoleon stands.

The look of abject shock and effrontery that rearranges Auriemma’s face into something more comedic than attractive is, as he tells her, “Priceless.”

The shock allows Gaby to elbow Auriemma in the ribs, shoving her back through the opening to the chamber. Auriemma claws for Gaby, catching her dress. With horror, Napoleon realizes he underestimated the effects of the poison. Gaby is too weak to fight her off and the two of them topple through. The machine whirls to life, triggering the automatic door.

In an instant, Napoleon squeezes through the door, ripping Gaby out of Auriemma’s clutches and thrusting her toward the narrow opening. Illya reaches through to tug her to safety but, to do so, loses his grip on the gap. The door seals shut, stranding Napoleon on the wrong side of the glass. A red glow bathes the chamber. The temperature rises.

Illya bashes his fists on the glass between them. Gaby staggers to the control panel. “Get the keycode from her!” she yells to Napoleon, voice muffled.

“Only Herr Doktor Böhm knows the code or how to operate the machine. I merely pressed start. Everything is quite automatic and irreversible now,” Auriemma states with less regret than if she had to cancel a dinner party. She places the irradiated tiara on her crown and smiles. For once her eyes are not cold but fever bright. The diamonds come on next, then earrings and a bracelet. “This is a beautiful end you have chosen for us, passerotto.” She holds up the necklace, asking wordlessly for him to put it around her neck.

The only thing he wants around her neck is the collar of a starchy prison uniform. “I think not,” Napoleon intones.

Illya has found a heavy statue to beat the glass with. It doesn’t so much as crack.

“Try the door hinges!” Gaby suggests. She scrubs her eyes, attempting to reverse-identify the code from sight clues like Napoleon taught her.

Worry gnaws at him. He knows from endless trainings that the effects of belladonna are far more fast-acting than radiation syndrome. Regular radiation syndrome, that is. Who knows what fresh horrors THRUSH has come up with? Napoleon slides off his jacket, the heat getting to him but trying to appear like he’s settling in.

“Where is our backup?” Gaby demands to know, her frazzled hands flying to her hair.

“In this weather?” There’s a smirk in Auriemma’s tone. “And with the access road out?” When Napoleon swivels toward her, she says, “Oh, yes. The others will have lit the charges to ensure their escape. Your comrades will be stranded.”

“Scheiße!” Gaby hisses, and informs Illya, “We’re on our own.”

Auriemma drapes herself across the velvet-lined display. Having earned his attention again, she says, “Amazing to think you wanted revenge against me so badly you turned to Communist brutes.”

A sharp thud resounds as Illya lifts up an end table and hurls it at the chamber to little effect beyond split wood.

Napoleon attempts to slick back his hair. “Oh, I’m not with the Communists, Auriemma. It’s much worse than that.” He opens arms. “You’re looking at a man from UNCLE.”

Her first reaction is to scoff. UNCLE is, after all, the bogeyman equivalent for THRUSH ideologues. When he doesn’t change his story, her brows come in. Then the realization of what she exposed to them sets in.

“Thank you,” Napoleon enunciates, “for those extremely helpful introductions. Agent Gabriella Teller will make the most of them, I assure you.”

Bitterly, Auriemma chuckles. “I wouldn’t be too assured.”

Napoleon turns to find Gaby with her weight against the panel. He leans on the glass between them, frowning down at her fluttering eyelashes. “Gaby! Gaby, stay with me.”

“Mir gut,” she murmurs. “ _Have to get you out_ …” She slumps, settling on the ground. Her eyes close and Napoleon shouts for Illya.

It takes a few tries before Illya stops in his hunt for what looks like materials to make a pipe bomb. When he sees Gaby, he goes absolutely still save for the tremor that racks him head to toe.

“Find Auriemma’s room,” Napoleon says, knowing only firm commands will slice through the red haze. “The antidote will be in her cosmetics case. Hurry!”

Gaby rouses enough to croak, “No! Napoleon hasn’t long before — ” She licks her lips. His own are dry and cracked already. “Cellular damage. I can hold on…” she slurs. She’s so strong, Napoleon knows, but Auriemma mixes her own poisons.

There’s a wildness to Illya when, still frozen, he meets Napoleon’s eye. 

Napoleon mouths, “Go,” and Illya lurches into action. To keep Gaby awake, Napoleon says to her, “I’m sorry.” He takes a breath. It’s still difficult, even to hedge. “That I couldn’t say what you wanted me to say in Buenos Aires.” Warm, brown eyes meet his. Their familiar depths make it a little easier to admit, “You were right.”

Her mouth curves. “Those are the words you think I wanted to hear?”

“Mio Dio,” Auriemma says from behind Napoleon, disgust in her tired voice. “Tu la ami.”

Maybe it’s the temperature of the room. Maybe it’s the radiation seeping into his cells. Or maybe it’s the way Gaby gathers her last bit of strength just to meet his fingertips on the glass. But for the first time in his life Napoleon longs for the release of a confessional. “I do love you,” he says. “I love you both.”

Tears slip between her closing eyelids. “Told you so.”

Metal scrapes woods as Illya sprints in not with the antidote but with THRUSH’s bug detecting machine and a pair of jumper cables. Confusion buzzes in Napoleon’s hazy mind, chased by a surge of hope. As the walking lab coats down in R&D are fond of saying, THRUSH tech has one hell of a feedback loop.

Illya lifts Gaby one-handed, making quick work ripping out the panel with his other. Once the cable is connected, Illya rushes back with Gaby.

Sparks fly, and the chamber lights shut off. Above Napoleon, vents pop open.

Knuckles rapping on the glass, Illya says, “Twenty minutes for decontamination. Don’t move.” He adjusts Gaby’s limp body to cradle in his arms. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells Napoleon. The urgent sincerity behind his blue eyes crushes Napoleon’s chest. But it is the sight of Illya turning his back and carrying Gaby out of the room that rattles his breath. He has to look away.

Auriemma is no longer lounging so much as slouching, the irradiated jewels touching her skin affecting her faster. Her bleary stare is devoid of her habitual possessiveness. Napoleon is a stranger to her now. He closes his eyes on a grateful sigh. “ _Death may come for us yet_ ,” she tells him.

Napoleon has been here before. He has toasted his own demise after being poisoned at dinner. He has arranged himself to make a better-looking corpse after being shot in his hotel suite. He has found the wry amusement in every near-death experience. He has shrugged his shoulders on behalf of the janitor’s son from New York City. The one who never expected to survive Hitler’s war but would at least die having climbed the Eiffel Tower. Napoleon has fought the good fight. Improved himself. Said his peace. He wants to say something glib, make one last gesture toward an indifferent world and an indifferent former lover. But Napoleon finds he isn’t indifferent any longer. So he rubs the ache in his hollow gut and battles to keep awake.

His eyes are still open long after Auriemma passes out. They are open when the door slides open and the back of his head hits wood flooring. He is gasping for cool, fresh breath when calloused hands pull him up. His head lulls onto Illya’s chest.

Illya’s thumb settles below Napoleon’s eye, pulling down so he can get a better look at his pupil. “It’s okay,” Illya keeps saying as his thumb drifts lower to stroke across Napoleon’s cheek. “It’s okay.”

Believing his partner, Napoleon finally allows himself to rest.


	6. Illya's Love

The first twenty-four hours are the hardest. Illya has three patients. One who refuses to admit she needs to lie down to recover. A second who is violent in her illness and her vitriol. And a third who drifts in and out of consciousness, sapped of his vitality and so unlike himself that Illya can’t bear to be in the same room for longer than he must.

The snowfall is heavy but by dawn Illya finds a radio signal strong enough to transmit to the station. There, Agent McKay relays with Dr. Polacek traveling from headquarters. Illya locates potassium iodide and a syringe among Herr Doktor Böhm’s discarded things, which he administers every hour into the pallid skin of Napoleon’s left arm. 

It is Gaby’s idea to place Napoleon, burning with slow-acting radiation sickness, into an ice bath. Weak as a kitten herself, she monitors Napoleon’s temperature tirelessly. Illya brings in a mound of pillows and blankets so that she may sit in relative comfort beside the tub. She presses her cheek to the back of Napoleon’s immobile hand and stares up at Illya in abject gratitude. 

Illya has to look away from her, busy himself downstairs saving Auriemma’s wretched life. Last night, he carried Auriemma to a settee and placed a rotation of buckets in reach. She had begun to vomit mere hours after the decontamination, a sign Dr. Polacek deemed unfavorable to her chances of escaping long-term damage. It calms Illya to look in on Auriemma, unconscious but still in agony. It lessens the impact of Napoleon’s pale and lethargic state.

Illya turns in place and, facing the torture chamber, realizes he is in the same spot where he stood paralyzed. Where he listened to Napoleon beg him to save Gaby. And Gaby beg him to save Napoleon. Where Illya failed to act even as a dark chasm expanded beneath his feet. Mastering hard choices and zero-sum games made Illya the KGB’s best. Cold logic told Illya there was no tactical reason to keep the target alive. There was no reason to prioritize one good agent’s life over another’s and risk losing them both. Gaby had a better chance of survival. Gaby had his pledge and his future and his heart. The decision should have been easy, instinctual. Not paralyzed. 

The floorboards creak under Gaby’s light steps. When it becomes clear he can’t acknowledge her, she ventures, “That was quick thinking.”

“No. I was slow.” Around the lump in his throat, he tells her, “I meant to do as he said. Save only you. The pragmatic choice.”

Gaby comes closer. “The KGB trained you to be pragmatic. UNCLE values creativity.” She slips her hand, still clammy from her illness, into his. “You took a chance on a crazy idea and you saved us both.” The pride in her voice is too much not to draw her knuckles to his lips.

Her eyes are luminous, despite the heavy circles beneath them. They search his and find far too much. “You’re still upset. Because you were…” Her brows draw in, trying to understand the storm of emotions Illya can hardly weather, let alone track. “Slow?”

Illya gives her the best smile he can muster, shaking his head. “What did you need?” 

Gaby continues to search even as she replies, “Napoleon is awake, and he’s cooled down. We can move him back into a bed.”

Napoleon can’t yet stand on his own. Illya holds him up, while Gaby helps him into a terry cloth robe. Already, Napoleon feels more solid in Illya’s arms. His damp skin less rubbery. Illya lifts him out of the tub, but they walk the short distance to the master bedroom together. Napoleon’s chin remains pointed downward on each step.

The moment Gaby tucks Napoleon in, he curls onto his side. Illya and Gaby watch his back for a long moment until she motions him to leave the room. “We’ll be just across the hall,” she tells Napoleon and flips the switch that sweeps the curtains shut to darken the room.

Illya paces the length of the adjacent bedroom. Pitching his voice not to carry, he says, “Something isn’t right. He didn’t ask for a single ridiculous comfort. Napoleon Solo.”

“He needs to rest, Illya,” Gaby says, getting into bed herself. “By tomorrow he’ll be milking this for all it’s worth.” Her voice is light, but Illya can detect the false note whatever she thinks.

“Dr. Polacek needs to do full examination.”

“He will. The storm will clear in a few hours, and in a few hours more they’ll have moved the debris.” She pats the mattress beside her with some force. “Meanwhile, you haven’t slept.”

Illya consents to lay down with her, needing to hold her in his arms. He has no intention of sleeping. Instead, he trains his eyes on the open doors leading into the master suite.

Catching him, Gaby says, “You’ll be no use to us a zombie.”

He dips his face into the hollow of her throat, where he’d placed a bandage himself. “Gaby,” is all he says, and she knows.

“You can’t forgive yourself,” she murmurs. “Even though you saved us both. Because what if you hadn’t?”

In the silence that follows, Illya wraps his arms around her tighter.

“Tell me this. If you hadn’t saved Napoleon, were you only scared for me? Because I asked you to save him?” Gaby grips Illya’s forearm, which secures her to him tight as a vice. Illya can imagine what she means. Did imagine it, in fact. That look of gratitude replaced by resentment, recrimination. Almost a whisper, she continues, “Or were you afraid for yourself? What you might lose?” Once more, paralysis grips Illya. Gaby presses on, fearless as ever. “It felt like a choice, didn’t it? His life or mine.” That much Illya can confess, nodding against the silk of her hair. “It wasn’t a choice,” she assures him, voice trembling. “It never has to be.”

Illya closes his eyes. Of all of them, Gaby is the believer in creative solutions. In UNCLE and its ability to rise above the harsh realities they face. In them, their team — improbable but united, everlasting. Illya would move mountains, reshape the world to better please her, if only such a thing were possible. If only he were strong enough.

“Napoleon loves us, Illya.”

Illya breathes her in. He believes her, he does. And he is not unaffected. Only his thoughts scatter toward probability and proportion. How much love and who for?

Almost breathless now, Gaby whispers, “He was very dramatic about it, very much himself. But changed. It can’t be easy. We’re all so stubborn.” There is such fondness in her tone, Illya is sure she is talking about him, too. Letting him know she doesn’t resent him for staying silent.

It takes a long while, but Illya does find sleep.

He is roused by Gaby slipping back into bed with him. The quality of the light tells Illya he has slept until morning. “Napoleon is fine,” Gaby reports. “Auriemma is charming as ever. I’ve spoken to McKay. They’ll be here any moment.”

“How are you?” Illya asks, sweeping Gaby’s bangs so he can kiss her forehead. He thumbs her fresh bandage.

“I survived watered-down milk in East Berlin. A little poison? Nothing.” She smiles, revealing a crease on her cheek. She must have been lying with Napoleon. Illya braces himself, but jealousy doesn’t come. Only a stomach-turning realization — it wasn’t Gaby Napoleon rolled away from.

While Gaby goes to help Napoleon dress, Illya goes down to unlock the library door. 

Auriemma remains a sickly shade of green, but she is upright when Illya comes in. He ignores her hostile stare, focusing on filling her syringe for the last time. He flicks out an air bubble.

“You could leave that in. For me,” Auriemma suggests, “or for him. It would be an accident. You could have your woman back.”

Illya makes it clear there are no air bubbles before he reaches for her arm. “Gaby is her own woman.” The first time he said those words, it had been to appease Gaby. Now he finds he prefers the sentiment.

Auriemma watches the needle pierce her skin. “Was she a good communist before Napoleon corrupted her?”

Illya can’t hold back a snort.

Leaning closer, Auriemma goads, “Were you?”

Anger, at least, is a feeling he is used to. “Don’t speak to me about corruption.” Illya removes the needle and blots at the blood with less skill than he might have. “You corrupted a boy with your greed and your prejudice. And you betrayed him, because you are snake.”

When he’s finished with her, Auriemma sits back. “Come now,” she drawls. There is no light left in her eyes, but she does a worthy impression of herself. “Is that any way to speak to a future colleague? I am so looking forward to working with you all. What an interesting trio you make.”

“Nyet,” Illya says, packing up the syringe and medicine. “You are mistaken in how UNCLE operates. You will tell us things or you will not. Makes no difference. You will go before international tribunal. Answer for your crimes.” Illya matches Auriemma’s mute fury with his blandest stare. “Fifteen years, I think, will be sufficient. At seventy, you start again, having paid your debt to society.” He pulls his lips back into a bleak smile. “Good day.”

Porcelain shatters on the back of the door just as Illya closes it.

The UNCLE secondary team arrives not long after. Dr. Polacek takes the stairs two at a time to keep up with Illya’s stride.

When they enter the bedroom, Illya sees that Gaby has Napoleon propped up on pillows. “A little more fluff on the left, if you’d be so kind,” he directs. There is color in his cheeks now. Illya has to imagine the mischievous spark in his eye from memory since Napoleon doesn’t look at him once. “And to the right.”

Gaby rolls her eyes as she complies. She shoots Illya a glance that says, ‘See? Be careful what you wish for.’ 

“Dr. Polacek, how good of you to come,” Napoleon greets. “I do hope you’ll have excellent news for me.”

“You’re a miraculous kind of patient, I always say,” Dr. Polacek replies, preparing to draw Napoleon’s blood. His team comes in behind him with so much portable lab equipment that Illya finds himself pushed out into the hallway. 

Rather than peer around the doorway like an oaf, Illya goes to consult with Agent McKay. The auction, Illya discovers, was shut down last night. His KGB colleagues took point on the operation, managing five arrests. INTERPOL had three more. Working together, they could have closed the net on all of the THRUSH suspects. Only plenty of jewelry has gone missing and who better to pin it on than international thieves? Illya tells McKay about the replicas. Impassive as ever, McKay notes that in his report but replies, “I won’t tell the Kremlin if you won’t.” There are many things Illya has come to classify as ‘What the Kremlin doesn’t know won’t hurt UNCLE.’ Stubborn as Illya is, he supposes he’s done his share of changing, too.

Illya directs the efforts to canvas the house for evidence. The secondary unit has just about everything packed save for Auriemma when the medical team pours down the stairs with their equipment. Dr. Prolacek pauses at the top of the stairs. He’s joined by Gaby and Napoleon, walking under his own power with a just a cane for support.

From afar, Napoleon is his immaculately coiffed self. The silk robe he exchanged for the terry cloth one is a rich burgundy that looks as tailored as any of his suits. The jaunty way he leans into the mahogany cane lends it the air of a high fashion accessory rather than any display of weakness. 

He doesn’t look up when the doors to the library open and McKay leads Auriemma out. She is almost out the door when Napoleon calls down, “Oh, Auriemma? Do write, darling. But please don’t wait in vain for a visit.” He sucks in a cleansing breath. “There is simply too much to do with one’s freedom.”

Auriemma bares her teeth at Napoleon as McKay turns her over to his agents. They frog-march the Italian snake out of Napoleon’s life for good.

“There's transport waiting, sir,” McKay calls up.

“Leave it, if you please,” Napoleon replies, shaking hands with Dr. Prolacek. “The doctor ordered a few more days’ convalescence, and I can’t abide wasting a chalet.”

The secondary unit agents in earshot chuckle. The agent nearest to Illya says in admiration, “Add radiation to the list of ‘Things That Won’t Kill Napoleon Solo.’” Another nudges his compatriot, noticing Gaby’s arm in Napoleon’s. Neither of them looks up at Illya on their way out.

For a clench-jawed moment, Illya thinks of returning with the team to Rome. Completing the mission. Debriefing with his KGB contacts. In short, doing his job and leaving the terrifying, treasonous mess he has made of his professional relationships with his UNCLE team behind. Illya’s life used to be simple. His thoughts and feelings used to be neatly contained and color-coded — black and white and red. He seemed monstrous to others then. Never an object of ridicule. 

But never himself, either. Whoever that may be.

Complicated as it is, the urge to turn away is fleeting. Illya ignores the sidelong looks from the secondary unit. He shakes hands with McKay and Dr. Polacek, collecting keys to a jeep in case of further snow and final instructions for Napoleon's recovery. 

When Illya is left alone in the foyer, he does a sweep of the perimeter and locks up the silent house’s many doors and windows. He takes inventory of the food supply, which is enough for a week. He finds, tucked in the back corner of the ground floor, a magnificent study looking out onto the snowy valley. There is a massive fireplace, a record player, a stocked bar, a chess table, and a library of books on art history. Few rooms in the world are better-suited to Napoleon Solo. 

Still, Illya hesitates before climbing the stairs. He lingers in the doorway to listen to Gaby, who sits cross-legged on the end of the bed and recounts with a grin how incensed Auriemma was when she defended Napoleon to her. Illya is somewhat heartened by the fact that, in his own way, he has done the same. 

When he knocks, Gaby’s head swivels toward him. Napoleon’s does not. Clearing his throat, Illya says, “I found study with view. Books and things. Maybe you be more comfortable?” If he had his hat in his hands, he would be wringing it. He folds his arms over the ridiculous urge and waits to be acknowledged.

“All right,” Napoleon says and, at last, meets Illya’s eye. It is less than nothing, as far as gestures go. But Illya finds the knot in his stomach easing.

For the rest of the evening, Napoleon sits in the study. He begins by taking Gaby through a cultural tour of Europe via several impressive volumes. Illya takes to the kitchen. He knows better than to remark on it aloud, but he is more comfortable behind a stove than Gaby is and has been handling their meals.

They eat together on trays in the study. Illya’s cooking is hearty and balanced, but Napoleon’s culinary flair has spoiled them all. They eat almost in silence. Napoleon must know he is being studied by Illya and Gaby both, but he carries on as if he hadn’t noticed. Illya can read in the looseness of Napoleon’s bearing that the act he’d put on this afternoon had taken something out of him. And it had been an act — a perfectly understated Solo performance. 

But instead of the disdain for artifice that soured their relationship in the first months they worked together, Illya finds pride. Napoleon has been shouldering a heavy burden of resentment and betrayal for most of his adult life. Yet his humor and resilience keeps him from buckling under the sudden buoyancy. Illya hates his own fear, his blame. His violence. Only he never learned how to talk about his shame.

So he sits here in silence and watches Gaby and Napoleon fall into their usual routine. They have been stuck together in countless safehouses, hotels, and headquarters. As antagonistic as the early days were, those long hours forged their partnership. The only action out of place belongs to Illya, who tips vodka into a glass for himself. Gaby is more surprised than Napoleon. Both wait for him to offer an explanation. Illya returns to his seat on the far divan and drinks alone. 

These past few months — after he turned tail and ran back to Moscow — he missed Gaby with an intensity worthy of the great poets. Missing her, Illya has to admit to himself, at last, wasn’t what drove him to drink. He missed Napoleon. His friend. The only man he’d allowed himself to want. For Gaby’s sake, he told himself. That lie had made Havana possible. The sight of Gaby and Napoleon on the couch together making plans for the three of them to return to the Piazza Navona and spend Christmas day in Rome with Waverly fills a void in Illya. He missed them both, and he almost lost them both. He won’t suffer either again without a fight. Again, he wants to open his mouth to say so. Only he never learned how to talk about his need.

It isn’t lost on Illya how easy Napoleon and Gaby look together. How carefully they look at him. The three of them are at an impasse, and Illya is the cause. He retires first, as he so often has to escape unbearable, unspoken tension. He feigns sleep when Gaby slips into his bed, warm from lying beside Napoleon.

The holding pattern keeps as Napoleon improves on Dr. Prolacek’s predicted schedule. 

The first day of his convalescence, Napoleon gains enough strength to reclaim the kitchen as his domain. 

After the best meal he’s had in months, Illya sets up a chessboard between himself and Napoleon. Illya almost loses, so distracted is he by the quietness of the match. He and Napoleon trade no insults. Gaby makes no arch comments on the nature of their rivalry. Napoleon’s capable fingers never brush Illya’s once. 

All three of them retire to bed at separate times. 

Illya slips in beside Gaby, perplexed. After she has made her intentions for them so clear, to not be pushed or prodded or pressured is a relief. In some ways.

The second day, Napoleon uses his cane and Gaby’s arm to walk the path Illya clears around the property. Napoleon and Gaby sit inside the study reading books and fashion magazines while Illya works out his restlessness on a stack of wood for the fireplace. 

He watches them through the picture windows. Gaby tells him with side-swept glances now and then that she must think he looks sweet in his coat and hat, that she must be impressed with his stamina, that the pile to his left must be growing to absurd proportions. Napoleon looks up just once to meet Illya’s eye. The glass between them does not fog up with heat but that doesn’t stop Illya’s ears from burning. 

He is transported back to the plane ride from Rome. The intimate proximity. The burn of skin and muscle and bone that longs to reach out. Illya remains no match for that intensity, and he swings his ax with a violence directed at his own confused cowardice. 

When he looks back up, Napoleon is retreating from the study. It occurs to Illya then that his violence just now might not have read as self-directed. And why would it be? After his performance in Havana, Illya doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. 

But Napoleon deserves an explanation. 

It takes Illya into the evening to sort out what he wants to say. They retire to the study after dinner. It is amazing to Illya that Napoleon and Gaby can never run out of things to chat about. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve Day, and they are taking turns relishing in holiday memories. 

“Our entire bloc had presents that year,” Gaby finishes with a wave of her fingers. “And the Stasi never did find the truck.”

Illya snorts, offering one of a handful of comments he has made this evening: “You must have had it in five hundred pieces by morning.”

Gaby smiles over the rim of her hot cocoa before taking a very satisfied sip. In the early days, she would have taken his comment as recrimination instead of admiration. And maybe he would have meant her to. They’ve both grown.

Illya is grateful not to have to explain at least this much of himself. Heartened, he’s able to say, “And you, Cowboy? What Christmas Eve mischief are you proud of?”

“Oh, my Robin Hood days were short-lived.” Napoleon stirs his cocoa and tests the spices. “Not enough nutmeg?” he posits.

Illya takes a dutiful sip. “It’s good,” he says, perhaps a touch too enthusiastically.  

“It’s perfect and you know it.” Gaby presses, “I want to hear about your Robin Hood days. It must have been tempting at that Fifth Avenue address you showed us.” 

Last year, on a walking tour of Manhattan extravagance for Gaby’s benefit, Napoleon had gestured casually at a building facing Central Park and declared it his ‘humble origins.’ Of course, since they’d both read his file, Illya and Gaby understood the truth behind it. Cormac Solo had been a maintenance worker. No doubt he raised Napoleon in a basement apartment on a diet of humility and envy. 

“Tempting but impractical,” Napoleon replies. “I must have been twelve or maybe younger. Light fingers, as you’d imagine. The wealth I redistributed — ” this he says with a capitalist’s ironic half-smile “ — was returned to my father, who was none-too-pleased at what I’d done.” Into his glass Napoleon explains, “There was the morality of it, of course. My mortal soul was always in jeopardy, and he dragged me to the priest by my ear. But I never considered how much worse off the people I’d tried to impress would have been were those fine things found in their possession. Don’t take risks on behalf of other people — not the right lesson, surely, but the one that stuck.”

Gaby makes a noise of agreement, and she must be thinking of neighbors dragged off into the night.

Illya raises his glass for his partners and their circumstances. “To honor among thieves,” he toasts and hopes his partners see he is in earnest. 

They drink with him.

Setting aside his cocoa, Illya claps his fingers together in front of him and says, “Christmas is very different in Soviet Union. As Gaby knows. We celebrate New Year. There are folktales that are like your Christmas. Father Frost, the Ice Maiden, so on. But these were hidden. My mother enjoyed them.” Illya swallows. 

He has a point he would like to get to, and their attentive silence tells him Gaby and Napoleon are willing to let Illya take his time to make it. 

“When I was a boy, the week before the New Year was a very special time. My mother and I had a secret. These folktales were not something my father wanted me to learn. He would work in Moscow, my mother and I would go to our dacha — our cottage in the country. My mother loves me very much, but this time together I always felt she loved me more. Or best. I — ” He forces himself to unclasp his fingers. “I was a jealous boy, I think. When my father came to our dacha for the New Year’s celebration, my mother lived for him. As did I. My father knew this, he must have. Because he made it a — almost a competition between us. The week before the New Year, I loved my mother. The week after, I loved my father.” 

When Illya struggles to continue, Gaby says, “That must have been confusing for you.”

“Da.” Illya nods. “Confusing.” That is what he is trying to explain.

“And difficult,” she supplies, slipping to her feet. She sits next to him and slides her small hand on top of his.

“It was worse after my father…was gone. Mama devoted herself to me. To see to my needs and education, she — ” Illya bites back the shame of it all.

“There were other men competing for your mother’s love.” Napoleon’s tone is devoid of mockery. He spares Illya having to illustrate further by concluding, “Love, in your experience, is a finite thing.”

Illya hangs his head only to see Gaby’s fingers curl into his. To her, he murmurs, “You said I’d never have to choose. But for there to be choice at all — ” He squeezes her hand. “You deserve a man who lives for you only.”

Gaby scoffs. “You think I’d settle for less of your love? Dummkopf,” she calls him, and with the warmth in her voice and in the way she caresses his face, it comes out an endearment. Her expression glows with understanding, hope. “Think of it, Illya. We’ve grown so much already.”

They have grown. Illya was just thinking as much. He nods his way into a kiss hot with promise.

Illya and Gaby are not so tangled up in each other that they don’t notice the rustle of Napoleon’s robe. He is almost to the door when Illya stands.

“Podozhdite,” he says, and Napoleon pauses but doesn’t quite turn around. Gaby squeezes Illya’s hand before letting go. Illya crosses the room in two strides, coming to stand at Napoleon’s back. “Stay.” 

Lips pressed and brow cocked, Napoleon turns his broad shoulders to face Illya. His guard is up, only there is no sharp glint of amusement behind his mask to prick Illya’s temper. Illya recognizes self-preservation when he sees it. 

Illya runs his thumbs over the pads of his fingertips to settle himself. “Please.”

Napoleon’s nostrils flare as the blue of his eyes go stormy. Illya wants to turn a pleading expression on Gaby, make her be the one to navigate those deep waters. But Gaby is not the one who must make amends. Illya proved his intentions to Gaby a year ago. He can take what he learned and prove them to Napoleon, too. 

Drawing in his shallow breaths, Illya raises a hand to Napoleon’s face and strokes down the contour. In the moment he became sure Napoleon was going to live, Illya’s relief overwhelmed his turmoil. He embraces that relief as he embraces Napoleon, one hand pressing his side, the other smoothing under his chin. Their mouths meet in a gentle brush. They reangle and brush again and again until their lips part on the same shuddering breath. 

The kiss is unlike any they shared in Havana. No clash of teeth, no fight for dominance. Only an opening, a deepening. 

They part for Gaby, who has come to stand beside them. Placing her hand in Illya’s, she parts her lips for Napoleon. An irrational twinge knots inside of Illya, but it is undone by the lust coiling deep in his belly. Pulling back, Gaby looks between them. She squeezes Napoleon’s hand, too. A tremor belying the effervescent note she strikes with her voice, Gaby suggests, “Shall we go upstairs?”

In Havana, they were pressed together in two rooms half the size of the study. They were drunk and reckless. In Cortina d'Ampezzo, they keep proximity by choice. They mount the stairs with a sobriety of step and foresight. They dart side-long looks for the giddy electricity circuiting through the three of them.

Illya helps Napoleon sit on the four-poster bed while Gaby illuminates the chalet’s master bedroom with soft lamplight. The dim warmth dances shadows along the impossible molding of Napoleon’s face. Illya thinks of it, but it’s Gaby who reaches out to stroke her thumb along the cleft in Napoleon’s chin.

His shudder is visible. Leaning back on his hands, Napoleon assesses Gaby and Illya with a languidness Illya knows better than to take at face value. “I’m not certain,” Napoleon says, the soul of tact, “that Dr. Prolacek’s recovery instructions quite covered this.” 

“There are no instructions for this,” Illya mutters. Even the heat of their first time had not been enough to burn away the awkwardness of who to touch and when and how. Illya settles for the obvious. He sweeps his hands along the back of Gaby’s neck. Bending down to kiss her nape, he pulls down her zipper.

Napoleon exaggerates a thought. “I might be radioactive. Have we considered that?”

Illya scoffs against Gaby’s silken skin. “You’d have no breath to comment about it if you were.”

“Oh, don’t say that.” Gaby angles her neck to pull a comforting kiss from Illya.

“As touched as I am,” Napoleon starts. Manners compel him to wait until Gaby is finished with Illya. Having their attention now, he repeats, “As touched as I am by your concern for me, I do wonder if the collective judgment in this room might be…” Napoleon’s brows rise as Gaby’s dress falls. He dabs his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. 

“Might be what?” Illya prompts, pressing himself against Gaby’s back. He frames her body with his hands, sliding down her arms, up her belly. Thumbing the edges of her white satin brassiere.

Napoleon takes it all in with rapt attention. Want and amusement and uncertainty flicker over his features. How could Illya have ever thought there was nothing going on beneath that polished surface? “Are we certain this is — ” Napoleon sucks in a breath with Gaby, who pushes into Illya’s hand. Illya rolls her nipples into hard peaks. Tone low, Napoleon finishes, “Quite the time?”

“Hush.” Gaby toes out of her shoes and climbs onto Napoleon’s lap. She settles there, arms wrapping around his neck. “We’ll be gentle.” Gaby’s promise and the clear nod Illya gives over her shoulder unlocks something in Napoleon. He sighs out his reticence and melts over Gaby’s lips.

Illya’s partners, so fixed and determined under normal circumstances, become pliable and eager under his hands. While they explore each other’s mouths and bodies, Illya takes care of the practicalities of hooks and elastic. They shift for him, graceful even at this. When Gaby’s supple skin is bared completely, Illya and Napoleon lavish over her natural sunkissed glow. 

Gaby tips her head back onto Illya’s shoulder. Her hands grasp the plush lapels of Napoleon’s robe. She pushes it off his shoulders, sinking her fingers into lush whorls of black chest hair. Illya follows her other hand as it wraps around his wrist. He lets her lead him around to sit on the bed beside Napoleon, thigh-to-thigh. Illya’s cheeks must be bright red, because Gaby remarks, “You’ll be more comfortable without the sweater.” Illya obeys, stripping off his undershirt in the same movement. Nimble fingers claim the sprinkle of dark blonde hair on Illya’s chest, too. “My boys,” she says to Illya and Napoleon both and slides her knee over so she is straddling their legs. There is satisfaction in her, of course — she is the cat who caught her canaries, as the English phrase goes. More than that, Gaby looks so relieved and grateful and pleased with him a thrum of pleasure spreads through his chest. 

Gaby raises her threading fingers to their hair, playfully nudging Illya and Napoleon into another kiss. As Illya slips his tongue into Napoleon’s mouth, he slips a finger into Gaby’s wet opening. She hums and Napoleon echoes it against Illya’s tongue. Napoleon brushes his hand along Illya’s forearm and up to grip Gaby’s thigh at the perfect angle to reach her clit with his thumb, eliciting a deep moan. Illya presses into Napoleon's mouth, into Gaby’s heat. She clings to their shoulders, rocking her hips with them. 

When her breathing goes rough, Illya and Napoleon part. The intent behind Napoleon’s conspiratorial grin matches Illya’s. They lean in to fasten their mouths around Gaby’s pert breasts and dedicate themselves completely to making her scream in record time. As she comes, their names fall from her lips in a jumble.

One arm wrapped around Gaby’s limp frame, Illya raises fingers that gleam with her taste. In Havana, he had all but shoved them into Napoleon’s mouth to hide his longing to see this — Napoleon leaning forward with agonizing slowness to wrap his lips around Illya’s fingers and suck, never breaking eye contact.

Subversive, overindulgent. Perfect.

Illya’s cock aches in the confines of his trousers. Napoleon’s tents his jockeys. There are things Illya wants to do and have done. Unbidden, doubts creep up Illya’s throat at the thought. He tries to swallow them by reaching forward and pushing the waistband over Napoleon’s cock. There, he falters, makes a fist. Something in Napoleon’s expression is reminiscent of his earlier words — perhaps this is not quite the time. A promise and a challenge to himself, Illya opens his fist and recloses it around the thick curve of Napoleon’s erection. There will be time to come for all manner of vices Napoleon will no doubt spin into virtues. For tonight, Illya moves so Gaby can take his place. 

While Gaby strokes him, Napoleon does away with the loose belt of his robe and leans back onto his elbows. Illya stands in front of them, not expecting his undressing to become a spectacle. Two pairs of eyes follow his trousers as they hit the floor, weighed down by his belt. The weight of two sets of eyes falls on the front of Illya’s briefs. He steps out of them and straightens. He resists the urge to stand at attention but is unable to affect any of Napoleon’s loose-limbed poses. Illya’s arms hang at his sides. Under the sweep of his partners’ eyes, Illya feels brash and ridiculous all at once.

After an eternity, Napoleon shifts up so he can cup Gaby’s cheek, gaining her attention. “It is so, so good of you to share.”

Gaby laughs, full and throaty. 

Some of the rigid awkwardness melts out of Illya, allowing him to arc over Gaby and kiss into her happiness. The three of them alternate kisses and caresses, nipping collarbones and licking necks, until Gaby palms underneath Napoleon’s and Illya’s cocks and asks, “Well?”

On his knees beside Napoleon, Illya has to tear his gaze away from Gaby’s open cunt. Napoleon cocks a questioning brow. Illya tries to remember his lesson on sharing.

“For heaven’s sake,” Gaby mutters, “it’s not as if neither of you likes to watch.”

Napoleon’s turn to laugh, he reaches out to tug Gaby by the ankle to the edge of the mattress, forcing Illya off the bed. Shamelessly, Napoleon crawls over Gaby to kneel by her head. With the aid of a couple pillows and his own chest, Napoleon props Gaby so that she’s level with Illya’s cock. “There,” Napoleon announces, sliding his hand across Gaby’s belly to tweak her clit, “that’s a view.” Napoleon wipes the evidence of Gaby’s arousal on her thighs. “She’s ready for you, Peril.” He brushes her cheek. “You’ve missed him, haven't you, sweetheart?”

Gaby nods against Napoleon’s chest, brown eyes shining with want and welcome. 

Illya’s breath hitches as he comes forward to grasp Gaby’s hips, raising them slightly. He has missed the slight weight of her dancer’s legs in his hands. He has missed, ardently, the way she huffs with impatience as he draws the head of his cock between her folds. As wet as she is for him, he meets resistance as he enters her tight cunt. It’s a slow push, filling her inch by inch as she suctions around him. 

“Fuck.” Napoleon’s glassy-eyed stare is locked onto where Gaby is stretched around the thickness of Illya’s cock. “That is obscene.”

Illya bites off a groan. He grips the sheets to keep himself still. Gaby moves first, circling her hips and fucking herself on his cock. When her ankles lock around him, Illya knows to begin thrusting. Shallow, watchful. Until her heels dig into his back, and Illya knows it’s all right to loosen his grip on his control. 

Loosen but not lose. It’s been so long and Gaby feels so good, his body shakes with the need to come. Illya stops to get a hold of himself. He watches the ragged rise and fall of Napoleon’s broad chest. His cock twitches. With two compelling reasons not to come yet, Illya relinquishes Gaby’s heat.

Illya can’t speak around the lump of lust and feeling in his throat, so he reaches for Napoleon instead. Napoleon’s cock is velvety hot and slick in Illya’s fist. Eyes trained on Napoleon’s lost expression, Illya pumps up and down. He is gentle, as promised, and thorough. As need builds, the tick in Napoleon’s clenched jaw spasms with the jump of his erection. His mouth falls open as artifice leaves him for the wonder of release. And so does Illya’s fist.

The noise that issues from Napoleon's throat is one-half agony and one-half appreciation. He’d stopped himself on the verge of coming in Havana more than once. And Illya knows well the heaven and hell that is delayed gratification.

Napoleon’s blistering glower swears retribution. It will have to wait. Napoleon’s eyes screw shut and his chin tips back. There will be time in the future to enjoy him wrecked and ragged.

Reading his mind, Gaby taps Illya on the shoulder with her foot. He helps her sit up and climb back onto Napoleon’s lap. Illya sits beside them, angled so he can see both their faces contort with pleasure as Gaby sinks onto Napoleon’s cock. 

Using his hands as leverage, Napoleon thrusts up from under her. Sweat gathers on his brow. He slows, leaning his forehead on Gaby’s. “I may not be up to my usual standard,” he pants, choked. “Near death experience and all.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Gaby chides, failing to hide a smile. She takes control with her usual aplomb, her thighs rippling. Illya traces the arch of her back. She is art in motion, always, and from this angle he can appreciate the delicate, strong musculature at play. 

Napoleon takes a firm hold of Gaby’s perfect backside, kneading and palming. Illya swallows around the lump that forms in his throat as he takes in the look of open abandon that has taken hold of Napoleon's impossible face. He keens softly, no doubt getting close. He bites his lip, and Illya pushes in to bite it for him. Illya thrusts into Napoleon’s mouth, swallowing his moans as he comes shuddering apart inside of Gaby.

Illya gentles Napoleon onto his back and runs a soothing hand over his over-warm cheek and neck and chest. Illya’s neglected cock jumps against the side of Napoleon’s leg. Gaby makes a space for herself between them. Napoleon rolls onto his side. Her mouth clamps onto Napoleon, and her ass wriggles against Illya’s cock. Illya presses into her incredible slickness. Napoleon reaches between them and — like the master safecracker he never lets them forget he is — has Gaby spasming around Illya’s cock in a moment’s work. Illya comes in three long, gratified thrusts.

They lay nestled into each other’s warmth. So close together that Illya can lay his arm across Gaby and Napoleon. Chests rising and falling in the same rhythm. They don’t speak because they don’t have to. This moment is an exciting beginning as much as it is an inevitable conclusion.

When they can no longer ignore the realities of wet spots and full bladders, Illya gets up first. Gaby he carries, as she is so often boneless after lovemaking. Napoleon he holds onto, in case the exertion drained him enough to need his cane. Together, they go through the door into the bathroom to wash each other clean.

There will be more nights like this. More days, weeks, years if they are careful in their work and with each other. For Illya, it is an anxious kind of anticipation. Or an anticipatory kind of anxiety. His partners are precious to him, and precious things require vigilant care. 

Fortunately, that is the only way Illya knows how to love. 

The rest he’ll learn.


	7. Waverly's Christmas

Waverly arrives into Rome at o-six hundred hours on Christmas Day. His week has taken him to hell and back. New York to Lyon to intercept with INTERPOL before they trampled all over his evidence. To Moscow to convince the KGB that the convicted art thief he employs had nothing to do with certain forged Romanov artifacts. Then to the Hague to testify at Auriemma Rossi’s initial hearing. And ensure no other intelligence agencies could swoop in and make her their new pet turncoat.

Not that any other intelligence agencies believed in THRUSH as more than a loose affiliation, like the Masons if the Masons collected experimental nuclear weaponry. That issue was less time bound to this week, more of a constant headache that flared up now and again.

This week. This week, Waverly notes grimly as the black car took him round to the safehouse, is not over.

His three best agents are alive and well on the mend, that was the good news. The bad news was what put him on a redeye flight to the Eternal City.

Oh, there was the invitation from Gaby. On the telephone, her voice was effervescent with promises about how Christmas wouldn’t be the same without him, that she wouldn’t allow their mission report to be turned in unless it was in person on December twenty-fifth. No ifs, ands, or buts. Waverly regrets teaching her that phrase.

How much he regrets sending her to Rome is will depend on the state of the things when he arrives. Waverly is expecting overturned tables and broken glass. General chaos and a two-meter hole in the holiday proceedings.

The bad news had come in the form of intel traveling its way from the secondary unit to Waverly’s desk via his secretary and her unassailable network of interoffice gossips. If the network is to be believed — and Waverly hasn’t gotten this far as a spy by not trusting his networks — when it comes to Agent Teller’s affections, Agent Solo is in and Agent Kuryakin is out — cold.

Hence the anticipation of destruction. So far, no reports indicate that Illya has gone MIA over this. Were he to, Waverly’s 1966 would certainly get off to an impressive start.

When the car pulls in front of the safehouse, Waverly instructs Agent Sanchez to stick to the Christmas markets within shouting distance and to prepare for code-anything.

Briefcase in front of him like a shield, Waverly goes up to knock on apartment 303.

Illya himself opens the door wearing a reindeer jumper and an actual smile.

Waverly almost drops his briefcase.

Behind him, Napoleon is lifting Gaby to reach the star on top of what looks like a recently chopped tree. They bid him in with an enthusiasm his decades on the job warn him to treat with the utmost suspicion.

It’s twenty minutes before the shock wears off properly. Mulled wine helps. It does not, however, explain how the network could have gotten the story half-right.

A dozen little gestures between Gaby and Napoleon — a shared spoon taste-testing in the kitchen, a hand lingering too long on a waist, a significant lean — all add up to ‘Agent Solo in.’ But a dozen more — most notably a kiss under the mistletoe, their days of absolute precaution in his presence well behind them — directly contradict ‘Agent Kuryakin out.’

Gaby Teller is a persuasive and resourceful agent, not to mention a beautiful, vibrant young woman. Even knowing this, Waverly would never have sent her on a mission to convince a Russian with a hair-trigger temper to accept an open arrangement with his best mate-slash-sworn enemy. And yet here they are. Perhaps she deserves a raise.

It isn’t until after they are heavy with Christmas turkey and all the trimmings that Waverly begins to catch on. It’s the gift exchange that does it, though it starts off normally enough.

Gaby gives him the mission report bound with a red and green bow, an ironic coffee mug with ‘World’s Greatest Spy’ printed on it, and two season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera he will no doubt lavish on her. Waverly feigns shock. “You found culture? In a city not yet half a millennium old? What a wonder you are, Gaby.”

From Illya, Waverly receives the best of Italian fashion an Englishman could wear without embarrassing himself in the streets. “Just the thing,” Waverly pronounces as he admires a pair of wingtips, giving Illya a gift back by not letting him see how very chuffed he is.

Napoleon has procured him gold cufflinks and silver candlesticks emblazoned with the crest of Brinscote. “These were fenced off by the seventh earl, if my family lore doesn’t fail me,” Waverly says. Napoleon calls them a lucky find and somehow conveys in his casual manner how much skill the procurement had taken.

In his briefcase, Waverly has brought sensible presents for his agents. Something for the field — Napoleon gets a pair of cufflinks that double as codebreakers. Something for the office — Illya is secretly chuffed himself to receive a spray canister of the Christmas frost repurposed to give him some privacy. And something for life outside UNCLE — Gaby kisses both Waverly’s cheeks in thanks for her private dance lessons.

When his three best agents begin exchanging gifts, the proceedings go from extravagant whimsy to small but deeply personal in an unexpected instant. Illya gets a kiss on the mouth for the stack of records he presents to Gaby, which he says, flushed, got him through their long absence. Illya gives Napoleon a dozen art history books, many of which look to be mint condition original editions from centuries past.

“Honor among thieves, ay, comrade?” Napoleon suggests.

To which Illya replies quite cryptically, “Call it growth.”

The fond half-smiles the two men exchange are anything but cryptic. Surprising, worrying. Inevitable, perhaps. But not cryptic.

Gaby gives Napoleon a box with three tickets to Havana for New Year. Napoleon hums “Auld Lang Syne” as he turns the tickets over and over in his hand. Such a look passes between the three of them that Waverly finds himself contemplating the buttons of his vest until it’s over.

It is Gaby and Napoleon’s joint gift for Illya that cements it all in Waverly’s troubled mind.

He has noticed himself how frayed Illya’s father’s watch strap has become. The replacement strap, as well as the lost watch case, affects Illya so profoundly he sits with his elbows on his knees for a long moment of silence. They let him have it, chatting among themselves, until Illya is finally composed enough to say to his partners, “Thank you.” Napoleon and Gaby, the co-conspirators, squeeze each other’s hands.

A thousand and one insurmountable tasks occur to Waverly as he adjusts to this new reality.

For a start, he slips into the kitchen to make a secured phone call to New York City. He leaves precise instructions with Mrs. Rosenblum to halt all transcription and secure the recordings from the Rossi infiltration immediately. “A matter of international security,” he confirms with her. Unless he’s missed his guess, those tapes are incriminating in more ways than one. Otherwise, he doubts very much that his best agents would let him in on their brave new arrangement quite so soon.

Gaby is behind Waverly when he gets off the telephone. “Thank you,” she tells him.

“Discretion is all I’ve ever asked of you,” he returns. “However, as a personal favor, if the word ‘defection’ ever gets seriously bandied about — ”

Stepping forward to rest her hand on his lapel. “We won’t do anything to jeopardize UNCLE. It’s our home.”

The trust and faith they place in each other — it’s unheard of. Blasphemous, really, to the entire intelligence profession. Peering over his glasses at Gaby, Waverly admits, “I misspoke when we last talked. You’ve made something real for yourself. For all of us, truth be told.” He takes her hand.

“I wanted the mug to say something else,” Gaby tells him, setting off something ghastly sentimental in his chest. “But I’d have hated to disappoint you by being too direct.” Her grin is catching.

“It’s this blasted mod decade. Your old man can hardly keep up.”

Squeezing his hand in both of hers, Gaby ushers Waverly back into the family room for hearty wine and sparkling water, sinful desserts, and crackers ever-so-thoughtfully imported from England.

In short, for a very unexpected but very merry Christmas.


End file.
